The S&P 500 was four points shy of making it four straight up weeks, but fell short at weeks end when it closed at 6,643 on Friday. It was a bookend week as the S&P 500 was up on Monday and Friday, but closed lower on the three mid-weekdays. After a slight dip at Mondays open, the markets picked up steam as Nvidia shares jumped nearly 4% higher on the back of an announcement that it will invest $100 billion in OpenAI for the buildout of data centers. Boosted by that news, the S&P 500 closed at an all-time high for the 28th time this year. Tuesdays news was dominated by Trumps UN speech in the morning, followed by Fed Chair Powells comments regarding elevated market valuations during his afternoon press conference, which led to a market sell off. On Wednesday the markets unwound Mondays AI news with skepticism regarding the potentially circular nature of the AI industry. With this tech weakness, the S&P 500 fell for a second consecutive day. Thursdays release of the third and final estimate of second-quarter GDP showed the economy growing at an annualized rate of 3.8%, revised upward from 3.3%. However, the markets sold off with the S&P 500 down for a third straight day. Before Fridays open the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index showed core inflation at annual rate of 2.9%, in line with expectations. The bulls returned to the markets with the S&P 500 up for the day, closing out the right bookend, but just out of positive territory for the week. From a technical perspective the S&P 500 is on track for a fifth straight months of gains. And this recent climb has been at a steady, controlled pace, with the last day of a 1% or greater move on 22 August. For next week we close out September and the third quarter on Tuesday, and the next big event will be Fridays payrolls and unemployment reports. For TSP TIPS lets focus on the analytics between the S and C funds. On 22 August the S fund took over the top position on the Performance Ranking (PR) leaderboard. On Thursday the C fund took over the top position, but the S fund took it back on Friday, with both funds PRs within 0.25% of each other, a very narrow margin. That said, the C fund closed at a new all-time high on Monday, making it three record days in a row, while the S funds last record was on Thursday, 18 September. In these cases where two funds have almost identical performance, we do a two-week projection as to what their PRs would be two Fridays from now if their prices remained the same. Over that two-week projection, the two flip flop numerous times with that PR gap closing to 0.12%. So what do the Composite Scores (CS) say for the next two weeks. They both are currently 100, but the S fund drops to 85 two weeks out. So lets transition the above to the Aggressive and Moderate models. The Aggressive model is the Top Fund, while the Moderate is the Top Two. Being true to those models, we are recommending 100% C fund in Aggressive due to the recent highs and projected CS. In Moderate it is 50/50 C and S. And not to be left out, the Conservative with three funds is 35/35/30 C/S/I, with the I fund making record highs on Monday and Tuesday.
The S&P 500 was four points shy of making it four straight up weeks, but fell short at weeks end when it closed at 6,643 on Friday. It was a bookend week as the S&P 500 was up on Monday and Friday, but closed lower on the three mid-weekdays. After a slight dip at Mondays open, the markets picked up steam as Nvidia shares jumped nearly 4% higher on the back of an announcement that it will invest $100 billion in OpenAI for the buildout of data centers. Boosted by that news, the S&P 500 closed at an all-time high for the 28th time this year. Tuesdays news was dominated by Trumps UN speech in the morning, followed by Fed Chair Powells comments regarding elevated market valuations during his afternoon press conference, which led to a market sell off. On Wednesday the markets unwound Mondays AI news with skepticism regarding the potentially circular nature of the AI industry. With this tech weakness, the S&P 500 fell for a second consecutive day. Thursdays release of the third and final estimate of second-quarter GDP showed the economy growing at an annualized rate of 3.8%, revised upward from 3.3%. However, the markets sold off with the S&P 500 down for a third straight day. Before Fridays open the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index showed core inflation at annual rate of 2.9%, in line with expectations. The bulls returned to the markets with the S&P 500 up for the day, closing out the right bookend, but just out of positive territory for the week. From a technical perspective the S&P 500 is on track for a fifth straight months of gains. And this recent climb has been at a steady, controlled pace, with the last day of a 1% or greater move on 22 August. For next week we close out September and the third quarter on Tuesday, and the next big event will be Fridays payrolls and unemployment reports. For TSP TIPS lets focus on the analytics between the S and C funds. On 22 August the S fund took over the top position on the Performance Ranking (PR) leaderboard. On Thursday the C fund took over the top position, but the S fund took it back on Friday, with both funds PRs within 0.25% of each other, a very narrow margin. That said, the C fund closed at a new all-time high on Monday, making it three record days in a row, while the S funds last record was on Thursday, 18 September. In these cases where two funds have almost identical performance, we do a two-week projection as to what their PRs would be two Fridays from now if their prices remained the same. Over that two-week projection, the two flip flop numerous times with that PR gap closing to 0.12%. So what do the Composite Scores (CS) say for the next two weeks. They both are currently 100, but the S fund drops to 85 two weeks out. So lets transition the above to the Aggressive and Moderate models. The Aggressive model is the Top Fund, while the Moderate is the Top Two. Being true to those models, we are recommending 100% C fund in Aggressive due to the recent highs and projected CS. In Moderate it is 50/50 C and S. And not to be left out, the Conservative with three funds is 35/35/30 C/S/I, with the I fund making record highs on Monday and Tuesday.