• Yields remained largely unchanged as the two-year Treasury note ended the week where it started at 0.16% while the five-year note decreased by two basis points to 0.81%.
• The labor market continues to build on its ongoing recovery with new weekly unemployment claims beating expectations with 547k new claims compared to an expected 610k.
• The White House called for raising the capital gains tax to ~40% on wealthy investors causing a brief downturn in equities, but with ongoing easy fiscal and monetary policy, investors are still displaying a healthy appetite for risk.
• The U.S. is progressing well climbing out of the pandemic and brightening the economic outlook, but the same cannot be said for the rest of the world as India and Brazil among others, face increasing case counts, hospitalizations, and deaths.