The S&P 500 will try to shake off one of its longest losing streaks of the decade on Thursday as the US presidential election moves ever-closer.
On the economic data front, initial claims and service-sector readings will be the highlights.
Earnings season is winding down, but headline reports expected out Wednesday include readings from Starbucks (SBUX), GoPro (GPRO), and Twilio (TWLO).
Labor, services
The weekly report on initial jobless claims is due out Thursday morning and economists expect first-time filings for unemployment insurance to total 256,000.
Initial claims haven’t totaled more than 300,000 in well over a year, the longest streak on record. Claims are preferred by many economists as one of the best real-time indicators of the health of the US labor market.
Service-sector readings from Markit Economics and the Institute for Supply Management are also due out Thursday morning. Wall Street is looking for a 54.8 print from Markit’s report and a 56.0 from the ISM figure. Both would indicate a continued expansion of activity in the services sector of the economy, which accounts for the vast majority of GDP growth.
Nonfarm productivity will also be released Thursday, an often-overlooked but lately more closely-watched figure in the wake of years of declining worker output in the US.
Fed on hold
The Federal Reserve kept interest rates on hold in its latest policy statement out Wednesday, as expected by markets.
The groundwork for a December rate hike now appears to have been firmly laid by the central bank. A rate hike in December would mark the second-straight year of Fed action at its last meeting of the year.
Rick Rieder, BlackRock’s Chief Investment Officer of Global Fixed Income, said Wednesday that the Fed, “repeating the phase that the case for an increase in the federal funds rate has continued to strengthen'” clearly lays the groundwork for a December move.
Wednesday’s policy statement also featured two dissents — from Esther George at the Kansas City Fed and Loretta Mester at the Cleveland Fed — indicating a heightened appetite for a policy shift at the bank.
Stocks, sliding
Wednesday marked the 7th-straight day the S&P 500 declined, the longest losing streak for the index since the 2011 euro crisis.
This slide, however, hasn’t included any individual days of a loss over 1%, something that was seen back during the 2011 sell-off, though this latest push lower has put stocks firmly in the red for the last three months.
History says that when stocks lose ground ahead of the election, there is typically a change in party leadership at the White House.
A sliding stock market, then, looks good for Donald Trump.
Further reading
The peso has told the whole story of the election — and the options markets says it’s about to go nuts (Yahoo Finance)
The mega-wealthy are buying up property in New Zealand (Bloomberg)
Microsoft and Slack are fighting (Business Insider)
Facebook beats earnings for the 14th-straight quarter (Yahoo Finance)
Fitbit shares get destroyed after earnings (Reuters)
Dave Matthews plays music for some bankers (Bloomberg)
Cubs-Indians Game 7 is going to do a HUGE ratings number (Austin Karp) Related: Tickets got crazy expensive (ESPN)
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Myles Udland is a writer at Yahoo Finance.
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