Stock Indexes End Q3 at Record Highs – Ep. 288

Record Highs in the Markets
This is the last day of the third quarter; S&P 500 and NASDAQ ended at record highs. I am not sure what made the Dow miss an all-time record - it was close but no cigar. Other broader measures did hit record highs to close out the quarter, in fact, Donald Trump was tweeting about the record highs in the stock market earlier this morning. Of course, when we were having record highs under Obama, it was a bubble and it didn't matter, but now that it is his bubble, it's now a bull market and it simply shows what a great job he is doing as President.
Weak Dollar Boosts International Markets
Of course, U.S stock markets were overshadowed by international markets, thanks in large part to the weakness in the U.S. dollar. The dollar did recover some of its losses in this closing week of the quarter (I believe, again, a bit of a dead cat bounce). I think the dollar is going to have its weakest quarter of the year in the fourth quarter, so we'll see if I'm right on that. But even with a little bit of a bounce, the dollar index back up to 93.o7. Despite that, foreign markets still well out-performed the U.S. stock markets in Q3 as did gold stocks. If you bought gold stocks, they did better than the S&P in Q3.
Gold Seeking Key Level
I think the divergence between the gold stocks and the S&P is going to accelerate in Q4. Obviously 1300 was not really the breakout; gold got all the way up to $1350 before turning back, and it's now back below $1300; it was off another few bucks today. So I think maybe $1300 wasn't the key level. It's probably $1350 or higher before we get the breakout. I think we're at $1280 right now.
Personal Income and Spending Weak
More bad economic news: the big number was personal income and spending. It met expectations, relatively, except they did revise July down. It was originally reported at +1.4% and they revised it to +1.3%, so, weaker than they had originally reported. For August it was up .2% and consumer spending was up .1%. Last month's +.3 was unrevised but this month met expectations of +.1% and these are low numbers

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