New Blog Topic…The Week Ahead
It seems there are little bits of economic news released about the economy every single week, and those announcements affect the stock market in varying degrees depending upon the importance of the data being released.
For instance, the unemployment rate is more likely to help or hurt stocks than say auto or truck sales in any given month. Since different economic indicators are released each month I thought it would be important to highlight some of these factors and how they might affect your investments.
Thus, we begin yet another new series of blog posts. I hope to post, at least on a somewhat frequent basis, a blog entitled “The Week Ahead” looking exclusively at the economic factors affecting the stock market. This blog will not be posted EVERY week as some weeks there are just not any significant pieces of economic data being released.
By the way, the monthly unemployment rate is announced by the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, on the first Friday of every month at 8:30am EST. This is one hour before the major stock exchanges open and should be considered required viewing/listening/reading for all investors. If you truly care about your investments and like to actively manage them to maximize your returns you will make sure you know the trend over the past few months to a year and that you pay attention that Friday when this data is released.
Now I mentioned that new car and truck sales are not as important; this would of course change entirely if you were heavily invested in Ford, GM, Toyota or any company that is involved in the manufacturing of cars and trucks. But for those of us that believe in a diversified portfolio, this factor would not be AS IMPORTANT as the unemployment rate. Oh, and just to be fair to the automakers, this data is released by each automaker that is publicly traded and usually done so on a monthly basis. Normally within the first 3 days of the month.
Look forward to seeing what The Week Ahead has in store for us! Both literally and in the Blog sense! As always your comments are welcome…