Weekly Market Commentary, December 22nd, 2020

ROBARE AND JONES ON THE MARKETS

Pizza is served… “stimulus package style”, but who ordered all the other toppings?

Among other items, policymakers’ plan to deliver new stimulus and fund the government is expected to include:

$325 billion for small business
$82 billion for schools
$69 billion for vaccines, testing, and tracing
$45 billion for transportation
$26 billion for farmland and agriculture
$25 billion for rental assistance
$12 billion for small business banks
$600 relief checks
$300/week of enhanced jobless benefits through early spring

The thing we can’t quite figure out is that the senate only had a matter of 4 hours to read a 5,593-page bill on the second largest relief package ever granted in the United States (which is do-able if you can read 5,850 wpm). It sure seems like a bunch of “last minute” items were thrown in there.

Some of the expenditures nobody understood included:

$40 million for the Kennedy Arts Center maintenance and security
$2.3 billion for Space Force equipment installation and handling
$1.1 billion on average to 12+ countries for foreign aid
$20 billion to USPS for salary increases
$300 million to public broadcasting

Hopefully, this debt relief can strengthen the underlying economy of this bull market. The future of bonds looks to remain near the floor as The Federal Reserve met last week. They affirmed it will continue to hold rates near zero and purchase $120 billion of bonds every month, The Nasdaq reported.

Let's take a look at the benchmarks from this past week!

Did You Know?

The first song played in outer space was Jingle Bells

NASA's Gemini 6A flight reached space on December 16, 1965 and earned the jolly jingle Guinness World Record for the first song played in space. The flight was originally scheduled for October, but was pushed to December because of a target vehicle exploding prior to liftoff.

Tinsel was once made of real silver

Throwing some tinsel on your Christmas tree is a quick and inexpensive way to jazz it up, but it originally came from the idea of silver. In Germany in the 1600s silver on the tree was used to reflect additional candle light from the candles that used to hang on the tree.

Americans spend almost double than expected each year

After a poll take by Deloitte, the average American expects to spend $805 in total on gifts each Christmas, but the survey showed that sample spend $1,496 on average.

Do you stay on budget for Christmas?