….Record highs for S&P, Dow, Nasdaq, Russell. Market drips higher. Trump goes to Puerto Rico, hilarity ensues. Automakers surge on flooded cars. Equifax unites politicians. Yahoo hack 3 times worse. Wells Fargo on Capitol Hill. ATM fees up. Financial Review by Sinclair Noe for 10-03-2017   DOW + 84 = 22,641 SPX + 5 = 2534 NAS + 15 = 6531 RUT + 2 = 1511 10 Y un = 2.33% OIL – .22 = 50.36 GOLD + .60 = 1272.10   The S&P 500, the Dow, Nasdaq and the Russell 2000 indexes all posted record high closes for the second straight day. Enjoy it while you can. The market has been slowly, steadily climbing. The more unusual factor is that it hasn’t been dropping. Even in a secular bull market we have pullbacks but dips as small as even 3% have been in incredibly short supply. If you’ve been waiting to buy the dips – sorry – there are no dips. Historically speaking, on average, the domestic equity market corrects every 11 months—the last correction was in November 2015. Meanwhile, on average, the U.S. equity market dips three to four times per year. The last dip was in June 2016. In addition to the nearly nonexistent downside, market volatility has also been hard to come by. Thus far this year, the S&P 500 SPX has only closed with a 1% move in either direction in eight sessions. That’s on track to be the fewest such moves since 1995, when there were 13. ...

Timothy Fiore with the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) Manufacturing Report on Business. September PMI up 2 percentage points to 60.8%.

….Records on Wall Street. Carnage on the Vegas Strip. Construction spending up. Manufacturing stronger. Tax plan might raise middle class taxes. Catalonian independence. Monarch grounded. GM goes electric. Equifax bungle grows. Financial Review by Sinclair Noe for 10-02-2017   DOW + 152 = 22,557 SPX + 9 = 2529 NAS + 20 = 6516 RUT + 18 = 1509 10 Y + .01 = 2.34% OIL – 1.04 = 50.54 GOLD – 8.90 = 1271.50 Once again, we saw records on Wall Street for the Dow, S&P, and Nasdaq. There will be no celebration today. The flags are at half-staff. By now, you all have heard about the mass shooting in Las Vegas. Here is the latest information. Last night, shortly after 10 p.m., at an outdoor concert in Las Vegas, gunfire erupted. The gunman was on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay, firing into a field of 22,000 concertgoers, across the Las Vegas Strip. At first, the people at the concert didn’t realize what was happening or where the gunfire was coming from. The gunfire sprayed down in rapid fire, likely from fully automatic guns – machine guns. 59 people are dead and over 527 injured, several in critical condition. Some of the injured were wounded, others hit by shrapnel, others were trampled in the chaos as they tried to escape. It ranks as the worst mass shooting in the US so far. Approximately 15 minutes later, police broke through the gunman’s hotel door. Stephen Paddock, a 64-year ...

Sinclair Noe interviews Thomas Davenport, co-author of “Competing on Analytics: Updated, with a New Introduction: The New Science of Winning”

…..3Q finishes on bullish highs. GOP tax scheme doesn’t add up. Tom Price flies into sunset. Consumer spending barely budges. PCE slips. Equifax freeze. Whole Food hack. Puerto Rico’s credit vultures. VW pays more. EVs cost less. Musk’ BFR. Financial Review by Sinclair Noe for 09-29-2017   DOW + 23 = 22,405 SPX + 9 = 2519 NAS + 42 = 6495 RUT + 2 = 1490 10 Y + .02 = 2.33% OIL + .02 = 51.58 GOLD – 7.30 = 1280.40   The S&P, Nasdaq and Russell 2000 closed at records for the third straight day and the benchmark S&P index posted its sixth straight month of gains. Add another notch in the over 8-year old bull market. Today marked the 38th session in 2017 in which the S&P 500 hit an intraday record level. September is normally a bad month in the markets but not this year. For September, the Dow gained 2.1 percent, the S&P rose 1.9 percent and the Nasdaq advanced 1.05 percent. Of the 11 primary S&P 500 sectors, nine posted positive returns over the month. And while Apple has stumbled in September, it remains the biggest contributor to the S&P for the year to date. Even the dollar posted a monthly gain for the first time since February.       And the third quarter numbers are good across the board with basically all regions, sectors, commodities, and bond categories seeing gains over the period. The S&P 500 and the Dow Industrials have ...

…..S&P 500 and Russell 2000 hit highs. 2Q GDP 3.1%. Taxes and math. Gary Cohn has never been to Home Depot. Twitter and the Russians. Supremes are back. Oil supply and demand. Drug news. Ikea for lazy people. Financial Review by Sinclair Noe for 09-28-2017     DOW + 40 = 22,381 SPX + 3 = 2510 (record) NAS + 0.19 = 6453 RUT + 3 = 1488 (record) 10 Y un = 2.31% OIL – .56 = 51.58 GOLD + 4.30 = 1287.70   The S&P 500 and the Russell 2000 hit record high closes. The S&P is up 1.5 percent this month, on track for its sixth consecutive monthly gain. September is normally the worst month for stocks.   The Commerce Department released its third and final estimate of second quarter Gross Domestic Product. Second quarter GDP was revised to 3.1%, up from the earlier estimate of 3%. Growth last quarter was the quickest since the first quarter of 2015 and followed a 1.2 percent pace in the January-March period. With GDP accelerating in the second quarter, the economy grew 2.1 percent in the first half of 2017. Hurricane damage is expected to put a dent in third quarter GDP, but give a little boost to fourth quarter numbers. Estimates for the growth rate in the July-September period are just above 2.2 percent.   Details of the Republican tax plan have yet to be filled in, so we can’t say yet who would pay what. The 9-page proposal released yesterday ...

…..Russell 2000 record. Tax plan unveiled, minus details. Treasuries slammed. Durable goods orders jump. Commerce slaps duties on Bombardier. Fewer contracts on homes. Sonic hack. Amazon has new stuff. Google turns 19. Financial Review by Sinclair Noe for 09-27-2017   DOW + 56 = 22,340 SPX + 10 = 2507 NAS + 73 = 6453 RUT + 28 = 1485 (record) 10 Y + .08 = 2.31% OIL + .18 = 52.06 GOLD – 11.20 = 1283.40   The Russell 2000 Index hit a new record high. The S&P 500 index hit an intraday record high but could not take out last week’s closing high.   The Trump Administration finally unveiled their tax cut plan, 9 pages of it (click here for full text). Trump spoke in Indiana today. The framework shrinks the number of tax rates to just three from seven today. The proposed rates are 12%, 25% and 35%. But it will be up to the tax committees to assign income ranges to each rate. The 12% bottom rate is actually higher than today’s lowest rate of 10%.   The plan doubles the standard deduction, to $24,000 for married couples and $12,000 for single filers. The framework proposes the elimination of most itemized deductions, including the state and local tax deduction. It also eliminates personal exemptions, worth $4,050 per person. So, a family of four could no longer reduce their taxable income by more than $16,000. Now this bears a closer look. Here’s the important fine print, the plan ...

….Graham-Cassidy is dead for now. Next up – tax reform, and this won’t be easy, either. Rich richer, poor poorer. Puerto Rico in terrible peril. Financial Review by Sinclair Noe for 09-26-2017 DOW – 11 = 22,284 SPX + 0.18 = 2496 NAS + 9 = 6380 RUT + 4 = 1456 10 Y + .01 = 2.23% OIL – .13 = 52.09 GOLD – 16.70 = 1294.60   The Graham-Cassidy health care bill is dead. Late yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation released a report on the bill – it was not a full score, or detailed analysis but it was enough to uncover the nasty truth. The bill would have ended the subsidies in the ACA for low- and moderate-income Americans’ private insurance premiums as of 2020. It also would have terminated the extra funding the ACA provided states that had extended Medicaid to more low-income adults. Instead, the measure would have provided states a smaller amount of money — about $240 billion less between 2020 and 2026 — in the form of block grants to spend on unspecified subsidies for health insurance and care. And the dollars would have been shifted gradually from states that had expanded Medicaid to the ones that hadn’t. The CBO report did not have enough time to calculate how many people would lose health insurance coverage but they made a rough guesstimate that the number would be in the millions. An analysis by the Brookings Institution estimates that about 21 million people ...

….Blame it on North Korea, or not. FAANG slippage. Fed and autumn leaves. Germany slips to the right. Abe snaps. Kurds seek independence. Oil pops. Deloitte hacked. Target raises minimum wage. Brown Univ. goes debt free. Financial Review by Sinclair Noe for 09-25-2017   DOW – 53 = 22,296 SPX – 5 = 2496 NAS – 56 = 6370 RUT + 1 = 1451 10 Y – .04 = 2.22% OIL + 1.43 = 52.09 GOLD + 13.20 = 1311.30   North Korea’s foreign minister said Trump has “declared war” on his country and threatened to shoot down US jets in international airspace. Ri Yong Ho said the “declaration of war” meant North Korea could target US bombers. He said: “The question of who won’t be around much longer will be answered then.” That was a reference to Trump’s recent tweet that the North Korean foreign minister, and leader Kim Jong-un “won’t be around much longer”. Maybe the North Koreans are good market timers and they timed their rhetoric for maximum market impact.  So far, no weapons have been fired but it offers a good excuse for selling stocks, if you were looking for an excuse.  A better justification is that stocks have been on a record-setting run and we are now heading into the end of the month and the end of the quarter, so it’s a good time to make the ledger look pretty.   Yet another justification is that the bull market is getting long in the tooth. ...

Sinclair Noe interviews Dick Foreman, CEO of the Arizona Business and Education Coalition with a preview of the 110th AZ Town Hall.