Stocks Down, But Off Their Lows  Image: Bigstock All of the major indexes closed lower yesterday, but well off their lows after cutting early losses by roughly half. There was no one thing that hit stocks yesterday. I heard some people say they are suddenly worried about the growth outlook. (Why? Because one Weekly Jobless Claims report finally ticked up one week after months and months of going down?) Then I read of some people now being worried about deflation. (Really? A few short weeks ago, everybody was wringing their hands over the prospect of runaway inflation. (Also wrong.) Now they're going in the other direction?) Just a lot of noise. And nothing out of the ordinary seeing the market go down a bit (markets were down less than -1%). After one of the best first-half performances in years; the S&P up 5 quarters in a row; and being up 10 out of the previous 12 days (and making 8 new all-time highs in the process), a little bit of profit taking should not come as a total shocker. In other news, the Weekly Jobless Claims I referenced up top, increased by 2,000 new claims at 373K. In all fairness, that was 20,000 higher than the consensus estimate of 353K. But is still only 2K above last week. And last week we just hit our pandemic lows. The smoother 4-week moving average ticked slightly lower from 394.75K down to 394.50K. Today we'll get Wholesale Inventories. Earning season continues as well. Although, the official start to earnings season doesn't start until next week when Alcoa reports on Thursday, 7/15, after the market's close. And since stocks typically go up during earnings season, it always brings with it lots of excitement. Especially since it's not uncommon to see individual stocks move 10%, 15%, 20% or more in one day after an earnings report. In the meantime, stocks continue to trade near their all-time highs. And with forecasts still expecting full-year GDP to come in at the fastest pace in 37 years, it looks like there's a lot more upside to go. Best,  Kevin Matras
Executive Vice President, Zacks Investment Research | 
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