Stocks Down Some Before the Fed Meeting

Friday’s inflation report wasn’t enough to scare the market. The S&P 500 closed at an all-time high even though the economy had its worst inflation in four decades.

Last week, the S&P 500 had its second-best weekly gain this year:

The stock market is down so far this morning although there’s no major economic news. The Federal Reserve meets tomorrow and on Wednesday. The policy statement will be due out on Wednesday afternoon.

There’s an unusually wide divide in today’s market. Both the energy and consumer cyclicals sectors are down over 2% while utilities, staples and REITs are up modestly. That’s another shift towards defensive stocks.

On our Buy List, we have new highs this morning from Abbott Labs (ABT), Hershey (HSY), Church & Dwight (CHD) and Zoetis (ZTS).

The WSJ reports:

Companies in the S&P 500 repurchased $234.5 billion in shares during the third quarter, topping the previous record of $223 billion in the fourth quarter of 2018, according to preliminary data from S&P Dow Jones Indices. The wave of share repurchases has helped propel U.S. stock indexes to dozens of records in 2021. The S&P 500 is up 25% this year, notching 67 record closes.

Posted by on December 13th, 2021 at 10:54 am


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