Market Updates

In a holiday-shortened week, investors were mercifully spared at least 1-½ days of market volatility and falling prices that have decimated portfolios over the past month. As the official start of the holiday shopping season gets underway, there are a few things to be thankful for. One is the early start to the season, as this was the earliest Thanksgiving since 2012. Hence, consumers will have several more days to visit the shopping malls, both the virtual and brick and mortar variety, to spend their hard-earned cash. We suspect that the experience won’t be quite as festive as last year, which was the strongest in more than a decade, but the registers should still be humming briskly. The fundamentals underpinning household spending are solid. Job growth is robust, workers are getting fatter paychecks and confidence is high.