Week of Mar 24 2017 Weekly Recap & The Week Ahead
“Letting losses run is the most serious mistake made by most investors.” – William O’Neil
1. U.S. Weighs Broad Sanctions on North Korea — the Trump administration is considering imposing sanctions aimed at cutting North Korea off from the global financial system as a response to its nuclear threats and missile tests. The penalties would be part of a multi-pronged approach of increased economic and diplomatic pressure, especially on Chinese banks and firms that do the most business with Pyongyang.
2. Target’s Store Makeover Plan — Target’s first fully redesigned shop in Houston will include two separate entrances: one for time-crunched grocery shoppers, and another for those who want to browse fashion or beauty. The company will use the design, which also includes order pickup parking spots, as a starting point for the 500 stores it plans to make over in 2018 and 2019. It’s part of the $7B investment Target (NYSE:TGT) disclosed last month.
3. Gain in the S&P500 YTD Made up of MegaCap Stocks –the S&P 500 is up over 6% already in 2017, but thus far it has only been large-cap stocks. Courtesy of BIG, In the chart below, decile 1 (labeled “Largest”) contains the largest 10% of stocks in the index at the start of the year. Decile 2 contains the next largest 10%, and so on and so forth until you get to the last decile (labeled “Smallest”), which contains the smallest 10% of stocks in the index.
4. Apple Is Closer to Manufacturing Phones in India — WSJ reported that Taiwanese contract manufacturer Winstron Corp. could start making the iPhone 6 and 6S models at its plant in Bangalore as soon as April, and add the assembly of Apple’s cheaper SE model in three months. India has one of the fastest-growing smartphone markets, and Apple currently only has about a 4 percent share of it. As the Indian population of 1.2 billion people continues to grow, the move presents an opportunity for the company to boost sales.
5. Oil Dropped for the Third Week Ahead of Kuwait meeting — oil is set for its third weekly drop ahead of this weekend’s meeting in Kuwait, at which OPEC and its production-cutting allies will assess the effectiveness of their actions to date. Talks will also be overshadowed by the question of whether the persisting glut requires curbs to be extended beyond the summer.
The week ahead — Economic data from Econoday.com: