The Bottom Line

● Domestic equities posted another week of gains but lost some momentum after a disappointing payroll release. European equities faltered on political news out of Germany, while Japanese equities rallied around their own political news.
● Treasury yields fell on the shorter-end with the 2-Year falling -1bps, but the longer-end rose slightly with the 10-Year gaining +1bps.
● Economic news for the week painted a blurry picture with the housing market showing signs of cooling, solid manufacturing that is being stifled by labor and parts shortages, and a gigantic miss on payroll numbers.

Is Growth Slowing?

For most of the week, equity markets were able to grind higher, but started to lose their footing after payroll numbers posted a massive disappointment. Despite this falter, domestic equities were all in the green with the S&P up+0.58%, the Nasdaq up +1.55%, and the Russell posting a gain of +0.65% for the week. European equities couldn’t hold onto their gain and fell -0.09% for the week after political turmoil emerged in Germany. Japanese equities rallied after Yoshihide Suga announced he is stepping down from leadership, but his party will remain in control. The Nikkei was up a whopping +5.38% for the week, most of which was achieved on Friday. Economic releases painted a mixed picture going into the long holiday weekend, with manufacturing showing strong output, but constrained from labor and supply chain shortages, housing markets cooled for the second month in a row, and wages grew but didn’t take employment with it. Market participants will be keeping a close eye on growth metrics and will be paying especially close attention to labor markets looking for any signs of trending weakness that could derail the Fed’s targeted plan to start tapering asset purchases at the end of this year.

Digits & Did You Knows

BRAND NEW HOMES — The median sales price of a new home sold in the USA in June 2021 was $390,500, a record high both on a nominal basis and on an inflation-adjusted basis. The old nominal record was $374,400 in April 2021. The old inflation-adjusted record was $345,800 in May 2017, equal to $383,898 in today’s dollars. (source: Census Bureau, BTN Research).
RED TAPE — Congress approved $46.55 billion in rental aid via 2 bills in 12/2020 and 3/2021. As of 08/25/2021, just $5.1 billion has been disbursed to renters or 11% of the total. (source: Emergency Rental Assistance Program, BTN Research).
THE FIRST ONE — The CDC has changed the date of the first US Covid-19 death from 02/06/2020 to as early as 01/11/2020. The CDC now believes 6 Covid-related deaths occurred before 02/06/2020. (source: CDC, BTN Research).

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Source: Bloomberg. Asset‐class performance is presented by using market returns from an exchange‐traded fund (ETF) proxy that best represents its respective broad asset class. Returns shown are net of fund fees for and do not necessarily represent performance of specific mutual funds and/or exchange‐traded funds recommended by the Prime Capital Investment Advisors. The performance of those funds may be substantially different than the performance of the broad asset classes and to proxy ETFs represented here. U.S. Bonds (iShares Core U.S. Aggregate Bond ETF); High‐YieldBond(iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bond ETF); Intl Bonds (SPDR® Bloomberg Barclays International Corporate Bond ETF); Large Growth (iShares Russell 1000 Growth ETF); Large Value (iShares Russell 1000 ValueETF);MidGrowth(iSharesRussell Mid‐CapGrowthETF);MidValue (iSharesRussell Mid‐Cap Value ETF); Small Growth (iShares Russell 2000 Growth ETF); Small Value (iShares Russell 2000 Value ETF); Intl Equity (iShares MSCI EAFE ETF); Emg Markets (iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF); and Real Estate (iShares U.S. Real Estate ETF). The return displayed as “Allocation” is a weighted average of the ETF proxies shown as represented by: 30% U.S. Bonds, 5% International Bonds, 5% High Yield Bonds, 10% Large Growth, 10% Large Value, 4% Mid Growth, 4%Mid Value, 2% Small Growth, 2% Small Value, 18% International Stock, 7% Emerging Markets, 3% Real Estate.

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