This week on 7 Market Movers, Aya Yoshioka, Doug Huber, and Gary Quinzel from Wealth Enhancement’s Investment Management team discuss the positive indicators they saw in the markets this week. Inflation came in softer than expectations, the consumer sentiment index came in higher than expected, and the jobs report also exceeded expectations, indicating an increase in hiring from US companies.

If you have any questions about how the current economy and market environment could affect your financial plan, reach out to a Wealth Enhancement advisor today.

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another edition of seven Market Movers. My name is Aya Yoshioka. I'm the portfolio consulting director and senior investment strategist here at Wealth Enhancement. And I'm super honored today to be joined by Gary Quinzel, our VP of Portfolio Consulting, and Doug Huber, our Deputy Chief Investment Officer. So, we thought this would be a great opportunity for everybody to see all of us together.

And we wanted to go through what happened in markets this week. So, I thought it'd be great to start with some of the economic data. So, Gary, what have we seen this week in terms of economic data that sort of caught your eye?

Thanks, Aya. About a week ago, we got an update to gross domestic product. That is the GDP number, which, you know, it's announced a couple of times. The first time it was announced about a month or so ago, it was a contraction negative 0.3%. First time we've had a contraction in a while.

And while that garnered some headlines, it was pretty well telegraphed of what happened. There was a ramp up, in imports, which is a detractor, from the GDP calculation. A lot of businesses were trying to accelerate their imports to get ahead of the tariffs. And, of course, that had outsized negative impact.

And so the slight modification to that GDP number, now it went from -0.3% to -0.2%, slight uptick in the right direction. So directionally or it overall, not a significant change, but directionally important because it helps demonstrate that, in fact, if you took away that one event, GDP really had overall had a relatively positive, quarter outside of the import factor. The other, event or news that was, noteworthy was, of course, inflation. We talk a lot about, inflation both on the CPI front, which is the number that most of us are more familiar with because that's what affects our Social Security payments.

But PCE is what the Fed cares more about. That reflects more people actually spend. And if you look at the core PCE number that actually extracts, food and energy, it was up two point five percent, which was this in, April, which was the second straight month of inflation coming in softer than expectations. And we've seen this pattern before.

Actually, last year started the same way WEG we saw the start of the year. We saw some higher hotter than expected inflation numbers, and then things kind of quieted down and, normalized. So what that means is that inflation is not running rampant, which is a good thing, of course, and it also has implications for the Fed. If you look at the futures, we're not expecting the Fed to lower rates, anytime soon.

The probability suggests something like a 97% chance of holding the rate steady, in June, and probably the next cut as of now wouldn't come until around September.

Doug, what did you see last week?

There were a couple great positive signs for the consumer.

First, a widely followed sentiment index, the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index, came in higher than expected, and that's probably the first time in several months. I know we've talked a lot about this when we've all done these seven market movers. You know? That sentiment really declined as all of the unknown around tariffs and inflation really tamped down what the consumer's expectations were.

And so it's nice to see that come back. Alongside that, I think importantly, was also the the jolts or the jobs opening numbers. And you might say, well, why is more job openings good? Well, more job openings means that companies are actually coming back to the table and thinking about, you know, growing again.

Right? They say, you know, we're going to hire. Right? We want to hire because we have expectations to do more. And so the Jolts number, which tracks job openings came in two hundred and ninety thousand, more than expected. And so I think the market saw that and said, okay. You know, maybe the economy is absorbing this headline risk.

We're still waiting to see the data, but it it's positive to see that both consumers are feeling better. And, clearly, you know, at least one mechanism of businesses feeling better is the fact that they're opening up, more jobs. And so those two, I thought, were an interesting tidbit.

No. Absolutely. And I think with that, you know, we did see the S&P 500 tick up about 1.07% for the week. We saw the Russell two thousand up 1.5%, and we saw the Nasdaq up about 1%.

On the fixed income side, we actually saw yields come down. So we've actually seen the two year yield come down about 0.15% and the ten year come down about 0.20%. So I think these are all reflecting really positive indicators, in, the economy and in the markets. And with that, we're gonna wrap it up for this week's seven market movers.

Thanks so much for joining us, and we hope you keep enjoying these videos.

This information is not intended as a recommendation. The opinions are subject to change at any time and no forecasts can be guaranteed. Investment decisions should always be made based on an investor's specific circumstances. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal.

2025-8074