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This Week’s Interest Rates and Stock Market Records

Market commentary from David Jones, Chief Market Strategist at Capital.com.

This week is a fairly quiet one when it comes to major announcements in financial markets – it’s mainly about the central banks, and speculation as to when the next global interest rate rises will be coming.

Wednesday evening sees the release of the minutes from the last rate setting meeting in the US by the Federal Reserve. But Thursday is likely to be more closely watched as the European Central Bank releases its minutes. At the moment it is widely expected that the next change for interest rates in the Eurozone won’t be coming till next summer – any hints that the bank is revising its view and bringing that forward could help provide at least some support to a weak euro, which only last week hit its worst levels against the US dollar for 13 months.

It’s an historic week for stock markets. On Wednesday, assuming there is not some sort of mega-crash in the meantime, the US stock market can celebrate the longest bull run in its history. On 22 August the recovery (and much more) from the March 2009 post-financial crisis lows will be 3,453 days old, eclipsing the 1990s market rally that ended as the technology bubble burst. The broader US stock index, the S&P 500 index, certainly appears to be starting the week in rude health. It is currently trading less than one percent away from the all-time highs set in January this year at 2873. In a little over nine years, this market is now up more than 300% from those March 2009 lows of 666.

Despite the backdrop of trade wars and some concerns that the latest strength in the technology sector has once again got somewhat over-extended, there still remains an appetite to be a buyer of dips. This year has not been without incident for stock markets with a sharp sell-off during February.  But once again this was taken as a buying opportunity for investors – do not be surprised if fresh all-time highs are set once again by stock markets in the weeks ahead.

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