{"id":3483,"date":"2016-09-15T15:34:30","date_gmt":"2016-09-15T19:34:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/162.223.13.186\/~zacksim\/global-equities-feel-some-pressure\/"},"modified":"2022-02-26T13:20:53","modified_gmt":"2022-02-26T13:20:53","slug":"global-equities-feel-some-pressure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zacksim.com\/blog\/global-equities-feel-some-pressure\/","title":{"rendered":"Global Equities Feel Some Pressure"},"content":{"rendered":"

Global Equities Feel Some Pressure \u2013 <\/span><\/strong>early this week and late last week, global equities felt a fairly sharp sell-off. Some news reports say that it was a \u2018return from summer vacation\u2019 that led many traders to trim positions and raise cash, but that\u2019s mostly hogwash. It\u2019s a fallacy to pin stock market movements on the seasons or something like a summer vacation for traders. Markets are global, and they\u2019re impacted by a confluence of all the news that hits it at once, as well as constantly revised expectations for future earnings. Could this be the start of a fall correction? Perhaps! You shouldn\u2019t read too much into it, either way. The market has been on a steady climb since February, so some downside pressure would not be unusual whatsoever.<\/span><\/p>\n

About Next Week\u2019s Fed Policy Meeting \u2013 <\/span><\/strong>the long-awaited FOMC policy meeting is set to take place next week (September 20\u201321), and the world will be watching as the Fed ultimately decides whether to keep interest rates steady or to raise them by a quarter point. Expect short-term volatility (remember, volatility works both ways \u2013 up and down) around the meetings, but we would caution against making any major trading decisions or portfolio adjustments as a result of the outcome. A quarter point is not relevant enough to swing the economy in one direction or the other and ultimately does not matter too much. The market has a one in four chance that the Fed actually raises rates, so we\u2019ll see. Fed governors are largely divided on the issue, based on statements released over the last few weeks.<\/span><\/p>\n

Self-Driving\u2026.Shopping Carts? \u2013 <\/span><\/strong>Walmart is getting into the self-driving space, except for their focus is on shopping carts, not cars. For readers that have used Uber or Lyft, you can push a button on your phone and minutes later a driver (whose name you know because of the application) will pick you up just like a taxi would. You can also enter your destination so that Waze or Google Maps ensures you take the most efficient route. In Walmart\u2019s case, they want to make it so you can press a button on your phone, and a cart will come to you! Smart carts may even be able to direct you to where an item is in the store, and give you information on inventory. The best part? The carts are designed to return themselves to the store after you\u2019ve loaded your car.<\/span><\/p>\n

Golfsmith Goes Belly-Up<\/span><\/strong> \u2013 for any of our readers that are golfers, you may be saddened to learn that you have one less place to shop for clubs, gear and apparel. Golfsmith International Holdings Inc. announced its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing this past Wednesday, which has it joining the ranks of other brick and mortar retailers like Sports Authority in the graveyard. The stocks that may be affected by the store closings are Nike and Under Armour, which in the past made substantial sales to Golfsmith. The Golfsmith chain has 109 stores in the U.S. and 55 in Canada. The Golfsmith bankruptcy is another stark example of the decline of big box retailers, but it is also symptomatic of the decline in interest in the sport of golf. The number of U.S. golfers dropped to 24.1 million in 2015 from a peak of 30.6 million in 2003, according to the National Golf Foundation.<\/span><\/p>\n

This week\u2019s news painted a clear picture of just how fickle the market can be, with exciting innovations like Wal-Marts shopping carts balanced out with the pressures felt by the equity market. If there is one thing we know for sure, it is that markets are impacted by the confluence news in addition to expectations for future earnings. Therefore, it\u2019s important to remember that trying to time the market can severely undercut your returns. Instead, focus on the long-term, ensure you\u2019re diversified and balance your investments according to your time horizon for tapping into your portfolio. This is what we do at Zacks Investment Management. We employ strategies and leading investment research from our parent company, to achieve optimal performance on a risk-adjusted basis. The success of our process speaks for itself as five of our investment strategies reside\u00a0in the top 10% of their respective classes according to Morningstar (as of 6\/30\/16)\u2014we call this our \u2018Dean\u2019s List.\u2019 Learn more about these strategies by clicking below\u2026\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Global Equities Feel Some Pressure \u2013 early this week and late last week, global equities felt a fairly sharp sell-off. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[71,73],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-private-client-group","category-steady-investors-week"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zacksim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zacksim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zacksim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zacksim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zacksim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3483"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zacksim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11191,"href":"https:\/\/zacksim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3483\/revisions\/11191"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zacksim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zacksim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zacksim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zacksim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}