Markets in the U.S. have remained range bound since the end of January, and with hardly any trend-altering data coming out this week, it looks like the major stock indices will continue to trade within the range.
We are about to get two important housing market statistics on new and existing home sales. Both data should indicate a mild uptick as consumer confidence remained high in April. However, the historically low rate of unemployment might not be able to drastically lift up sales of big-ticket items like homes as the Fed has promised to increase rates in the coming months.
The good news is Q1 earnings releases coming out this week look solid and, amazingly, high-yielding stocks like Target Corporation (TGT ) are still trading at a very reasonable P/E ratio. So, there is hope that a lot of individual companies in the U.S. have the potential to turn bullish once again.
To sum up, expect volatility to remain stable this week as indicated by the decreasing CBOE Volatility Index and the stock market should continue to gain ground as it did since the start of May.
Check out last week’s Market Glance here in which the U.S. labor market and the housing sector provided investors with ample optimism.
