A Good Year Ahead?

 Recent technical movements suggest that the market may be poised for even larger gains. Check out this article from yahoo! Finance.

Here Comes Santa Claus

 See here (yahoo! finance) for more on the so-called "Santa Claus Rally." The five trading days before Christmas, combined with the two after, are, on average, the best seven trading days of the year.

Correlation Is Not Causation

 A number of studies have looked at such items as the "Super Bowl Indicator" -- i..e, the effect on the stock market of which division's team wins the Super Bowl. Others include the impact of a Triple Crown winner in horse racing. The newest one is the returns in the market during time periods when McDonald's is selling the McRib, versus when they are not. There is a strong correlation to returns, but this is obviously not causation. See article here (Of Dollars and Data).

Tesla Splits Stock

 To make the stock more accessible to investors, Tesla is enacting a 5:1 stock split. Given that the recent share price was about $1,400, the split should reduce the stock price to under $300. This follows a similar move by Apple, which announced a 4:1 split. See article here, WSJ.

Gold Prices Soar

Uncertainty caused by the coronavirus, combined with a declining dollar, have propelled gold prices higher. See article here, Fox Business.

Hedge Fund Fees

While hedge funds, and other alternative assets, offer many potential benefits, one of the key drawbacks is the high level of fees they charge. For more on this, check out this article, WSJ.

Fiscal Stimulus

April sales experienced the largest monthly drop on record (-16.4%). However, following the fiscal stimuli, May sales posted the largest monthly increase (17.7%). This result illustrates the positive (short-term) impact of stimulus, but there is much more debate surrounding the long-term implications of the increase in government debt necessary to support the stimulus. For more, see this article (Yahoo!).

Unemployment Statistics

With the recent COVID-19 pandemic and related fallout, unemployment has been a hot topic, and there is much debate about the accuracy of the numbers. This stems from defining the participation rate and other factors that are subject to change. Check out this article (Yahoo!) for some additional insight.

Expected vs. Unexpected News

Private payrolls were announced, showing that over 20 million people had lost their jobs. But, the market didn't react very much -- likely because this was an expected number. Check out this article at yahoo! entitled: Why Wednesday's historic jobs data was 'not really news'

Negative Oil Prices

In the wake of a drop-off in the demand for oil, prices went negative for the first time in history. What does this mean? Like any asset, the price of oil is driven by supply and demand. With high supplies and effectively no demand, suppliers are now having to pay users to take oil off their hands since they have too much and nowhere to store it. In fact, on April 20, some oil prices actually closed at -$37.63. So, if you have any place to put it, you could get paid to takes some oil. See article here, Forbes.

Free Connect for Move to Virtual Courses

For those moving to virtual courses, McGraw-Hill's Connect platform is being offered free of charge: https://www.mheducation.com/highered/support/connect/how-to-move-your-course-online.

Circuit Breakers Tripped

In the wake of an oil price war and coronavirus fears, the market sold off rapidly to start the day on 3/9/2020. Very quickly, the market fell 7%, triggering a circuit breaker and halting trading for 15 minutes. Find out more about the activity here, CNBC.

Flight to Safety

As a response to significant risk, investors often undertake a "flight to safety." To benefit from this behavior, Direxion recently launched FLYT, which is an ETF based on a flight to safety strategy. The investments are split among utility and gold stocks, as well as bonds. You can find more information here, Direxion.

Tesla Destroys Shorts

Following strong results, Tesla shares hit an all-time high, jumping nearly 79% over the past year. There have been a significant number of skeptics who were short, and the recent jump further exaggerated their losses. In fact, short sellers in Tesla have lost over $8 billion in the last five weeks alone. See article here, WSJ.

Unexpected Coronavirus Impact

The World Bank issued a pandemic bond in 2017. The bond provides funding for the development bank’s Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility (PEF) if a the severity of an outbreak of one of six viruses meets certain levels. This is similarly to an insurance catastrophe bond. See article here, Marginal Revolution.

Behind the Numbers

While it is important for economists and investment analysts to evaluate economic data, sometimes the surface data are not sufficient to tell the whole story. For example, check out this article (Yahooe! Finance) that examines some underlying elements of the unemployment rate.

Option Trading Activity Increases

Option activity has increased as online brokers have targeted ads and information toward new investors. Check out the article here, WSJ.