Weekly Market Recap May 20, 2018

This was a generally quiet week in the senior indexes, consolidating some of the prior week’s move up. That said the Russell 2000 had some very nice action with a “breakout!”. Otherwise pretty quiet on the news front except for TRADE WARS!(tm):

On Thursday, several news outlets reported that China had made an offer to cut its trade surplus with the U.S. by $200 billion, but a China official on Friday denied that an offer had been made.

For the week the S&P 500 closed down 0.5% while the NASDAQ fell 0.7%. The Russell 2000 diverged, gaining 1.3%.

The only major economic report this week was retail sales which gained 0.3% in April vs a revised 0.8% gain (up from 0.6%) in March.

Treasury yields were back in focus as a move over 3% happened again.

“The additional backup [in yields] appears to be driven by stronger expectations for growth and inflation, and the potential for additional Fed action beyond September,” said Lindsey Piegza, chief economist for Stifel.