Despite the long weekend and Labor Day holiday, traders spent this week sending stocks on a roller coaster ride. As we’ve seen over the last few weeks, stocks continued to move violently to the news cycle.
Coming off the holiday, traders were greeted with plenty of geopolitical news. The Trump administration once again ratcheted up its criticism of China amid the recent civil rights abuses in Hong Kong. Cybersecurity was also on the minds of the administration this week as it made moves to limit and remove Chinese-based tech from U.S. shores. This sent traders heading for the exits early on.
As did moderate data. While there wasn’t too much economic data released this week, key measures of inflation, production and labor health – despite showing improvements – missed estimates. This gave concern that the economy wasn’t improving at a fast-enough rate.
Meanwhile, the sell-off in high-growth sectors continued. Traders took profits in technology, healthcare and consumer discretionary names after weeks of moving higher.
In the end, stocks whipsawed through much of the shortened week and struggled to find a footing.
Be sure to check out our previous Wrap here, when stocks followed a similar volatile pattern.
