I wanted to give you a quick market update. After a lackluster September in the market, October has bounced back nicely. The jobs report for October came in very strong with companies adding 571,000 new jobs for the month beating the 395,000 Dow Jones estimate. This was in addition to 523,000 jobs created in September. "The primary market trend appears to be higher," said Keith Lerner, co-chief investment officer at Truist. "In the eight periods since 1950 where stocks were up more than 20% through October, as they are this year, the S&P tacked on additional gains by year end 100% of the time with an average gain of 6.2%."
Equities (stocks) rose to new record highs yesterday as companies continued to deliver strong earnings reports. 80.9% of all S&P 500 companies reported earnings that beat consensus expectations. That's despite ongoing supply chain disruptions, labor challenges, commodity inflation, central bank policy and Covid risk. In my opinion, I think double digit returns are very likely for this year barring any unforeseen incident that would derail gains made so far this year. It usually comes down to company profits. As Larry Kudlow would say "corporate earnings are the mother’s milk for stock prices." If corporations are doing well, the economy is usually doing well, which in turn means stocks are doing well.
As always, we are continually seeking the best places to make money in any economic environment. I think we are in a very good place at the present time. The Santa Claus rally (which takes place in December) has the potential to be very good this year.