“Heal the World, Make it a Better Place”

Former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke seemed to be inspired by the king of pop’s words last week, stating that they had saved the world from disaster and are now on the path to restoring the economy to a better place. After an enormous rebound during the middle of the week, the Fed helped to drive sentiment even higher, during Friday’s session, as the chairman encouraged investors with his words to head back into the market. In a speech at the Kansas City Fed’s annual retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyo, Bernanke commented on what had been a terrible year for the U.S market, and stated that due to coordinated efforts between central banks, the world’s economy now seems to be recovering. Even though the Chairman was quite positive with his words, he was also remained cautious about the outlook, stating that while sentiment is now turning around, the economy still has a few hurdles to overcome, before the economy returns to full speed.

Unlike previous press releases, Wall Street took the comments more to heart, showing confidence in the current trends. The S&P500 broke above prior resistance during Friday’s session led by materials. The financial sector and the housing sector also showed relative strength last week, stimulated by housing data. Existing home sales jumped by 5.24M compared to its prior result of 4.89M. The figure was the largest monthly increase in sales in the past decade.

When taking a glance at the table below one can see that new homes and existing home sales have recently increased, showing possible signs of a bottom.




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