By: gianlini on Lunedì 08 Ottobre 2007 12:20
Dice che lo DEVE fare per evitare la recessione e per mettere a posto i conti delle banche
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It was another great week to own stocks, especially fundamentally superior ones. The Dow cracked through 14,000 again on Monday, a new all-time closing high, as did the S&P 500 today, after investors became convinced that the Fed would continue to lower interest rates and avoid a recession.
The September employment report brought good news for stocks. Payrolls increased 110K, slightly more than the 100K consensus, and the unemployment rate nudged a tenth higher to 4.7%. Moreover, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised its report of an ugly 4K payroll loss in August to a gain of 89K. As such, the Fed has a good chance to avoid a recession—if it continues to lower interest rates.
We say “if” because there are several reasons that the Fed cannot rest on its laurels and hold interest rates steady, the most obvious being that the housing market has yet to confirm a bottom.
There are also signs indicating that the unemployment rate will continue to climb in the months ahead. Specifically, temp hiring is now tanking, down 20K in September. If temp losses are sustained, “It would signal a clear outright drop in private payrolls in the first quarter of next year,” said Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency Economics, adding, “A rising unemployment rate is more or less a done deal; nothing motivates the Fed to cut rates more than a loosening labor market.”
Further, the Fed is expected to continue to lower rates to shore up the banking mess. Several banks had huge, multi-billion dollar write-downs this week. Specifically, Merrill Lynch wrote down a net $5 billion, Citigroup reduced its third-quarter earnings outlook by 60%, due to massive write-downs from “dislocations in the mortgage-backed securities and credit markets, and deterioration in the consumer-credit environment,” and UBS took a $3.4 billion hit in Q3.
We expect a 25-basis-point cut at the October 30/31st FOMC meeting, and another 25-basis-point cut on December 11th. This should provide a powerful springboard for stocks in general, but as more and more money leaves the value indices constrained by financial stocks and is reinvested, growth stocks could explode higher.