Finance

SPX: It’s All About Perspective…

By Kurt Osterberg · On April 7, 2018

SPX: It’s All About Perspective…?

April 6 @ 11:30 am ET

A reminder from this post that 2625 and 2585 are important near/long-term support/resistance levels for the SPX…and that if 2585 failed to hold, a retest of 2460 was long overdue…or even an eventual decline to 2220…

April 6 @ 2:35 am ET

* UPDATE at Friday’s close…today’s low is a fraction above 2585…

As we’ve witnessed over the past months, the Fed’s former “plunge-protection” program has been replaced by its rate-hiking policy and discontinued bond-buying program. This factor, combined with:

political uncertainty tied to the November mid-term Congressional election,

President Trump’s tweets/threats of tariffs on billions of dollars worth of goods from China, and

today’s comments from Secretary-Treasurer, Steve Mnuchin, “Well I didn’t say it’s not the beginning of one, I said that we’re actually not in a trade war…but there is the potential of a trade war.”

means that we will see volatility remain elevated throughout the year (as I had warned in my 2018 Market Forecast for 2018). No doubt, these factors (uncertainty about tariffs, rising interest rates/borrowing costs, and the potential for worse political gridlock) will place headwinds on businesses in determining wages, expansions, mergers & acquisitions, etc., and will blunt, to a certain extent, economic benefits that may have materialized from the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act that was passed by Congress late last year.