In today’s weekly review we look at the markets and muse on whether the inflation and rate adjustments driven by changes in Central Bank policy will precipitate a soft or hard landing. Some say the U.S. Federal Reserve’s effort to tame inflation with aggressive interest-rate hikes mean that a recession is inevitable, leading to a plunge in stock prices this year. Others, like Jeremy Zirin, senior portfolio manager and head of private client U.S. equities at UBS Asset Management says a soft landing is still possible. Possible yes, but is it plausible we ask?
What we do know is that the S&P 500 Index fell for a fifth consecutive week, which its longest losing streak in more than a decade, after April’s US jobs data bolstered the case for the Federal Reserve to continue to lift interest rates.
And the Dow posted its sixth-weekly loss Friday, as a better-than-expected monthly jobs report kept fears about an inflation-led slowdown in the economy front and center at a time when expectations of more aggressive Federal Reserve policy tightening continue to heat up.
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