Week’s Events for 12.18.20 (plus COVID'S ECONOMIC IMPACT)

Below is the usual Sunday night weekly summation, the main positive being the beginning of the vaccine rollout and one that happened tonight after this was published on Friday -- the passage of the stimulus bill!  The main negative remains the deadliest day yet for the pandemic -- and a new major negative this week -- the massive Russian hack of our most secretive institutions. 

The bonus this Sunday evening is a very nice summary of a very complex topic as presented in this week's edition of the PBS program WealthTrack hosted by Consuelo Mack. It is Wall Street guru Ed Hyman's assessment of the damage the pandemic has caused to the U.S. economy, a 20 minute program well worth a view.  Hope everyone enjoyed this final weekend before the holiday.  Stay safe. Oakland and Wayne counties are listed by Johns Hopkins as two of the top twenty hot spots in the country. 

Succinct Summation of Week’s Events for 12.18.20

December 18, 2020 5:00pm by Barry Ritholtz

Succinct Summations for the week ending December 18th, 2020

Positives:

1. US begins distribution of Pfizer Covid vaccine; we are closer to the end than the beginning;
2. Hope springs eternal for a deal on a Congressional Covid Rescue package to cover the long dark winter.
3. Home mortgage apps rose 2.0% w/o/w, above the previous decrease of 5.0%.
4. Business inventories rose 0.7% m/o/m, above the expectations.
5. Index of leading indicators rose 0.6% m/o/m, above expectations.
6. Current account deficit came in at $-178.5B for Q3, above expectations.
7. Housing starts came in at an annual rate of 1.547M for November, above expectations.

Negatives:

1. Massive Russian hack compromises US national security, military secrets and other crucial functions.
2. Pandemics most deadly day in as over 3600 Americans die;
3. Jobless claims rose 23k w/o/w from 862k to 885k.
4. Housing market index is at 86 for December, below expectations.
5. Retail sales fell 1.1% m/o/m, below expectations.
6. Industrial production rose 0.4% m/o/m, below the previous increase of 0.9%.
7. PMI Composite is at 55.7 for December, below expectations.

12-17-20 COVID'S ECONOMIC IMPACT - WealthTrack

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Sponsored by: December 17, 2020  Dear WEALTHTRACK Subscriber, Every year at around this time we sit down for an in-depth interview with legendary economist Ed Hyman. There was so much to talk about this year that we extended it to two parts.    Hyman has been voted Wall Street’s number one economist in Institutional Investor magazine’s prestigious annual survey of institutional investors for an unprecedented forty years.     He is Vice Chairman of Evercore, a leading independent investment banking and advisory firm. He is the Founder and Chairman of its Evercore ISI division and leads its economic research team which publishes daily reports considered to be must-reads by institutional investors. Last week, in part 1 he shared his outlook for the economy in 2021, which he expects to be a blowout in the second half due to the combination of a vaccine, massive monetary and fiscal stimulus and rising home and stock prices. He cautioned however that there would still be considerable pain until then because of high unemployment, rising rates of COVID and continuing aftershocks from business shutdowns.  This week, in part 2 he will share his fifty years of economic perspective on the extraordinary events of 2020 and how the pandemic has changed the economy and markets. It will be a fascinating conversation with one of the best business cycle analysts of our era.      I can’t wait to share it with you!  As always if you miss the show on public television, you can watch it on our website over the weekend.  You can also find the WEALTHTRACK podcast on Stitcher and SoundCloud as well as iTunes and Spotify. Thank you for spending your time with us during this busy holiday season. Have a wonderful weekend, a merry Christmas holiday and make the week ahead a healthy, profitable and productive one. Best regards, Consuelo Facebook Twitter WEALTHTRACK Site YouTube Channel As always, if you miss this week’s program, it will be available on our website. Also, I want to thank all of you who are following me on Twitter For those of you active on Facebook: You can connect with us on our Consuelo Mack  WEALTHTRACK  page.