Weekly Market Recap Sep 17, 2017

A sharp rally Monday was followed by 4 relatively quiet days as gains were efficiently consolidated. After a brief respite, bears are back on the run again. No real catalyst Monday other than “less damage than expected from Irma” and no weekend hijinks from the North Koreans. For the week the S&P 500 gained 1.6% and the NASDAQ 1.4%.

Katie Stockton is giddy:

“The U.S. stock market is exhibiting positive short- and long-term momentum, and breadth has expanded enough to lift the S&P 500 to a new all-time high,” said Katie Stockton, chief technical strategist at BTIG Research. “Short-term overbought conditions have returned for the S&P 500, but they tend to be managed well when associated with breakouts, which are abundant,” Stockton said.

On the economic front, household incomes have finally reached (inflation adjusted) levels once seen in the NASDAQ bubble; it took nearly 2 decades for that to happen!

Median household income last year was $59,039, up an inflation-adjusted 3.2% from 2015, the Census Bureau said Tuesday. It was a new high for the figure, surpassing the previous peak for household income reached in 1999.

A reading on consumer prices, known as the consumer-price index, showed an increase of 0.4% in August, beating consensus estimates for a rise of 0.3%. U.S. industrial output fell 0.9% in August, its first drop in seven months. The Federal Reserve said the decline was mostly due to the recent impact of Hurricane Harvey. A Commerce Department report on Friday showed retail sales fell 0.2% in August, bucking economists’ expectations for a gain, following a 0.3% increase in July. Both July and June retail sales were revised lower.

Remember all that talk about reducing deficits and such during the last election (like ALL elections)?? Yeah not so much:

The U.S. officially hit $20 trillion in debt, with about half of that added over the past decade or so.