“Are small-cap stocks signaling a bear market?,” said a headline on CBS MoneyWatch this past week. “A bear market could hit U.S. stocks any time now,” Mark Hulbert, a columnist at MarketWatch wrote 10 days ago. “After a long drought, bear market funds attract buyers,” read the headline on an August 11 story published by Reuters. Despite some frightful headlines, the bottom line on the entire array of forward-looking economic data is that continued economic growth is ahead. For example, the best forward-looking index of economic activity, the U.S. Index of Leading Economic Indicators, is tracked monthly by The Conference
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Despite political upheaval in Washington, D.C. and a decline in stock prices for the second week in a row, the economy showed strength last week. The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index, a barometer of America’s promise, suffered its second consecutive weekly decline, closing at 2425.55. But the decline for the week was less than 1% and Friday’s close was only about 2.5% off the all-time high close of 2480.91, reached on August 7, and it came as economic data continued to suggest the 96-month old expansion and bull market was continuing to gain strength. Americans opened their wallets in
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