The short week produced the third rally in recent months, on widespread buying by investors which occurred throughout the week rather than just on a single day.
Reasons given were surprisingly good earnings, reassuring Fed comments, very surprisingly strong new home sales and savvy investors generally taking advantage of very oversold conditions.
Still a surprising development, given American consumer spending has been key to bringing most recessions to an end, and that group’s optimism as measured by the Consumer Confidence survey just came in at the lowest level in over 40 years – owing to inflation’s negative effect on personal budgets and employment situation (better right now to be an in-demand airline pilot or truck driver than a realtor or mortgage refinance processor).
This leaves much doubt as to whether this rally signals the beginning of a real trend reversal to the upside or whether prices will soon slump back to new lows as they did after the prior rallies in mid – March and late May.
For the moment at least, last week’s broad-based rally raised most of our stock prices, somewhat decreasing our short gains but also lessening our long position losses (primarily in Level 1).