Last Week: 1.63%
YTD: 10.00%
1 Year: 33.62%
Dow Jones Industrial Average
Last Week: 1.75%
YTD: 5.16%
1 Year: 24.78%
Last Week: 2.13%
YTD: 9.83%
1 Year: 40.44%
Last Week: 2.15%
YTD: 2.43%
1 Year: 21.02%
YTD: 12.07%
1 Year: 44.46%
YTD: 6.99%
1 Year: 22.94%
Fed Meeting
Fed Chairman, Jerome Powell, spoke last week following their March meeting. The U.S. Federal Reserve is still projecting three rate cuts in 2024 despite an improved economic outlook. In Powell’s press conference last Wednesday, he said the central bank was not completely dismissing the recent inflation reports, though he did say the January data may have been distorted by seasonal factors. January’s inflation was higher than expected, after cooling inflation numbers from December were signaling the Fed may be able to lower rates.
Home Sales Spike
Sales of existing homes surged 9.5% in February. The inventory of houses hitting the market also rose 5.9% year over year. This increase in housing has also caused the large demand to drive the median price up 5.7% from a year ago. This will be a factor when the March inflation data is reported next month. Sales were still down 3.3% from a year ago, but it was the largest monthly increase since February 2023. The largest increase in sales comes from the Western part of the U.S., up 19.4%, and the South, up 16.4%.
Boeing Woes
Breaking news this morning: Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun will step down at the end of 2024. This is part of a large shake-up of the aerospace giant’s management team. They have been in the headlines weekly for the larger part of the year due to major quality control issues. Airline regulators have been calling for major changes at Boeing after numerous manufacturing flaws have been called out. The first major incident came back on January 5th, when a door plug blew out of a new Boeing 737 Max, 9 minutes into the Alaskan Airlines flight. Calhoun was appointed to the CEO position in late 2019 after its previous CEO, Dennis Muilenburg, was dismissed following his poor handling of the aftermath of the two deadly 737 Max crashes.
