With talk of China trade tariff improvements after last weekend’s G20 meeting, the S&P 500 gapped up Monday morning, opening at 2799 with over a one percent gain from the previous Friday’s close. That glimmer of hope quickly disappeared and it turned into a “punch to the gut” week. By this Friday’s close of 2633, the S&P 500 was down nearly 6 percent from that gap open price. During the week, those trade improvement hopes faded with the arrest of the China corporate executive on alleged hacking into U.S. technology service providers. Interest rate worries also continued with the inversion of the 3 year Treasury note yield crossing above its 5 year counterpart. Thank goodness Friday’s job report fell in line with expectations or things could have been worse. For TSP TIPS, both the S and I funds are at their lowest prices since the latest sell off started in October, and the C fund is only 6 cents above that low. All told, it is somewhat comforting to be avoiding that “punch to the gut” by being 100 percent in the G fund right now and as such, we’ll continue with that allocation.
With talk of China trade tariff improvements after last weekend’s G20 meeting, the S&P 500 gapped up Monday morning, opening at 2799 with over a one percent gain from the previous Friday’s close. That glimmer of hope quickly disappeared and it turned into a “punch to the gut” week. By this Friday’s close of 2633, the S&P 500 was down nearly 6 percent from that gap open price. During the week, those trade improvement hopes faded with the arrest of the China corporate executive on alleged hacking into U.S. technology service providers. Interest rate worries also continued with the inversion of the 3 year Treasury note yield crossing above its 5 year counterpart. Thank goodness Friday’s job report fell in line with expectations or things could have been worse. For TSP TIPS, both the S and I funds are at their lowest prices since the latest sell off started in October, and the C fund is only 6 cents above that low. All told, it is somewhat comforting to be avoiding that “punch to the gut” by being 100 percent in the G fund right now and as such, we’ll continue with that allocation.