Donna Block
TAKING STOCK
I love New York. It’s the city that never sleeps – I’ve been doing very little of that myself – and has a vibe that can’t be matched anywhere else in the world. Springtime here is wonderful. Everything has a clean, fresh feel to it. Birds are singing, if you can find any flowers they are in bloom, and everyone seems to have a spring to their step. But after being here for the past couple of weeks it appears the spring in their step has more to do with an economy that won’t quit than with the change in the weather. I grew up here and there’s a distinct difference to this city of 14-million stories – the streets used to be abuzz with talk of crime and how the city was deteriorating. Today, the streets are filled with talk of the stock market and the boom in jobs.
From truck drivers to bankers, everyone is trading up in the job market and using their earnings to trade in the stock market. Confidence among investors is high, even though there’s been a rout in technology shares recently, volatility in the markets reign supreme and the Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates. The booming job market is the main driver behind this confidence and is what has helped United States consumers propel the economy to new heights. Higher interest rates have helped to dampen some key areas of the economy like the housing market but, for the most part, confidence remains high because of an energetic job market.
The Federal Reserve has raised short-term interest rates six times in the past year, for the most part to ease consumer demand. At its most recent meeting in mid-May, the Fed boosted the measure of its previous quarter-point rate hikes to half a percentage point, after demand for cash showed no significant signs of slowing. Higher short-term rates, which act as a basis for everything from credit cards to mortgages, are intended to slow economic activity by making it more costly for consumers and businesses to borrow and spend.
In the past few months, the Nasdaq composite index, the benchmark for strong economic growth in recent years, has fallen sharply. The Nasdaq recently traded near 3E200, down from its mid- March high of 5E000. But as one analyst noted – the “volatile financial markets and interest-rate hikes are not expected to have a significant impact on consumers’ spirits”. Consumers have been a major driver of the record US economic expansion, accounting for roughly two- thirds of the nation’s gross domestic product. As the economy has surged in recent years, unemployment has dropped as the confidence in the economy has risen. Many economists have also attributed strong confidence to the wealth created by rising stock markets. Recent surveys of investors show an abiding long-term faith in the stock market. And why not? Countless market experts have been saying for the past 20 years that if investors can hold tight for at least 10 years, they’re sure to reap decent returns from stocks.
There are also worries among analysts that if the Fed doesn’t feel that significant progress is being made in slowing down the red-hot economy it will continue to tighten credit, and the financial market’s near-term fate may be at risk. Even though the latest readings on confidence levels may indicate that stocks may be less of a factor in the morale of consumers, many economists are concerned that the irrational exuberance over stocks has lifted their prices to absurd levels relative to earnings. And, investors’ expectations for what stocks can do over the next five to 10 years may be unreasonable.
Moreover, as good as the economy is in the US, the collapse of technology stocks in recent months has left many investors shell-shocked in markets around the globe. The spill-over from US markets has taken its toll on markets like the Johannesburg Stock Exchange as fickle investors become risk adverse and move assets to safer havens.
So, having a good job might just not be enough to keep those spirits up as the merry month of May ends with shares rallying but volume, the amount of shares traded, light. As June kicks off what was once historically the start of the “summer rally”, investors could see the bulls and bears fighting it out on the “street” for supremacy. I’ll have to see if I can detect a little less spring and more of a chilly wind in the step of those New Yorkers.