Market Direction Is Important –
Updated Chart of the S&P 500 and Secondary Signals
Of our Four secondary indicators under our MTI:
Relative Strength Index (RSI)-Positive
Chaikin Money Flow (CMF)-Positive
MACD- Negative
Money Flow Index-MFI-Positive
More on the Market and the Economy:
Stocks rose on Friday, recovering from a sharp sell-off on Thursday, and paring a weekly loss. With Friday’s gain, the S&P 500 closed out the week with a .44% loss, after closing out the month of April on Thursday with a .85% gain.
This week, data will be released on factory orders, the service sector, the Challenger job-cut report, the trade deficit and the jobs report.
The US homeownership rate continued to decline at the start of 2015, dropping to a quarter-century low. The homeownership rate fell to 63.8% in the first quarter – the lowest since 1989. Homeownership had fallen steadily since it peaked in 2005 at 69.2%.
Source: census.gov
While homeownership declined, the total number of households increased significantly for the second quarter in a row – many of those new households are renting. And among Americans that do not own a home, fewer expect to buy one: 41% of non-homeowners do not plan to buy a home in the “foreseeable future”, according to Gallup.
The middle class is struggling, according to the St. Louis Fed. A recent report from the St. Louis Fed’s Center for Household Financial Stability found that the middle class may be under more financial pressure than we think: “families that are neither rich nor poor may be under more downward economic and financial pressure than common but simplistic rank-based measures of income or wealth would suggest”. The study found that the median incomes for “thrivers” and “stragglers” were 2% and 8% higher respectively in 2013 than they were in 1989, while the median income for the middle class dropped 16%.
Fewer Americans today identify themselves as middle class than in 2008, according to Gallup. Today, 51% of Americans consider themselves to be middle class or upper-middle class, compared to an average 61% from 2000 to 2008. Today 48% say they are working or lower class.
From the Pew Research Center, an interesting graph on what the American public knows, and does not know:
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