Shesa's Investment Blog

The stock  Market continued to recover from last week's sharp pullback, with the S&P 500 up over 6.5% from the August 5 lows, and the Nasdaq up over 8%. Two factors seemed to have driven the positive sentiment over the past several days, because inflation data continues to moderate, with both consumer price index (CPI) and producer price index (PPI) inflation coming in softer than expected for the month of July. Secondly, the  retail sales and jobless claims coming in better than forecast.  On Thursday, 8/15, the stock market had a big rally after a strong July Retail Sales report and encouraging quarterly numbers from Walmart which reinforced the idea that the U.S. economy is not inching towards recession rather braced for a soft landing. We got great CPI numbers yesterday, inflation falling to 2.9%. Also, good PPI numbers on Wednesday. However, the main catalyst today was   July retail sales which was up 1%, much better than expected 0.3%. More over the weekend...

  By Shesa Nayak U.S. Stock Market Update   For the last few weeks, the stock market has been like a roller-coaster. No major stock indexes and no major stocks were spared causing pain for the investors. In general, stock market is dull in the month of August and September since many institutional investors go on vacation and the volume comes down. It creates great opportunity for the traders, short sellers and hedge funds to cook. These days, the markets reacts to any economy news viz. Unemployment, CPI, PPI, PCE etc. Furthermore, due to the high frequency and algo-trading, the stocks goes on either direction so fast that it’s extremely difficult to take right decision at the right time. Primarily, the stock market is controlled by big players, so it’s further complicated for the retail investors to make money.  Well, the Volatility Index or so called fear index VIX which was almost dead for last 3 years ignited fire and spiked to 65 on Monday, 8/5, almost three tim...