Week of June 7, 2024 Weekly Recap & The Week Ahead
“Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.” – Warren Buffett
1. Job openings fall to lowest level since February 2021 — latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released Tuesday showed there were 8.06 million jobs open at the end of April, a decrease from the 8.35 million job openings in March. March’s figure was revised lower from the 8.48 million open jobs initially reported. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had expected the report to show 8.35 million openings in April. The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) survey also showed 5.6 million hires were made during the month, little changed from March.
2. Boeing’s Starliner Launches NASA Astronauts After Setbacks — the space capsule, carrying astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams, was launched Wednesday at 10:52 a.m. ET from Cape Canaveral, Fla. A NASA livestream showed Starliner shooting toward space after the flight began. The launch marked a major step forward for a program that had been slowed by repeated technical problems, and exacted a financial toll on Boeing. A successful mission would pave the way for NASA to have a second U.S. option for handling astronaut missions to the International Space Station, with Elon Musk’s SpaceX carrying out crewed flights for the agency since 2020. Starliner’s next steps include docking with the space station and, as soon as June 14, returning to Earth under parachutes. “There’s a lot of phases to this mission, and we just completed the first one,” Mark Nappi, a Boeing vice president overseeing the Starliner program, said at the briefing.
3. ECB Cuts Interest Rates for First Time Since 2019 — the ECB said it would reduce its key interest rate to 3.75% from 4%, its first rate cut in almost five years. Future interest-rate decisions will be based on incoming economic data, the bank said in a statement. The ECB’s rate-setting committee “is not pre-committing to a particular rate path,” the bank said. The rate cut is a significant moment for investors and the world economy. It marks an inflection point in recent monetary policy and sends a signal that relief is on the way for households, indebted governments and businesses that have reined in investments in the face of high borrowing costs.
The cut also potentially puts the ECB and the Fed on different tracks and widens an existing gap in borrowing costs between the U.S. and Europe. While this could boost Europe’s growth in the short term, the gap could also complicate the work of policymakers, especially in Europe.
4. Hiring Defied Expectations in May, With 272,000 New Jobs — Total nonfarm U.S. jobs increased a seasonally adjusted 272,000 jobs in May, the Labor Department reported on Friday, more than in April and well above the 190,000 that economists had expected. Average hourly earnings also topped forecasts, rising 4.1% from a year earlier. In a report that was otherwise strong almost across the board, the one caveat was the unemployment rate, which ticked up from 3.9% in April. It was the first time in more than two years that the jobless rate hit 4%.
The week ahead — Economic data from Econoday.com:
