Stocks mostly fell on Friday.
The S&P 500 fell 0.3 percent after news that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was reviewing new evidence on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s email server. US stocks fell despite a report earlier on Friday showing that the economy grew at an annual rate of 2.9 percent in the third quarter.
The STOXX Europe 600 also fell 0.3 percent but the Nikkei 225 rose 0.6 percent.
Bonds were relatively stable after two days of sharp declines. Nevertheless, the US 10-year Treasury yield edged up to 1.847 percent, its highest since 27 May.
While October closed on a weak note for stocks, next week starts a new trading month, one which has historically kicked off the best six-month period for stocks. According to Adam Shell at USA Today, the Dow Jones industrial average has posted average gains of 7.4 percent in the November-through-April period compared to a 0.4 percent return May-through-October.
“The seasonally bullish pattern has a better-than-average chance of playing out this year,” Doug Ramsey, chief investment officer at Leuthold Group, was quoted as saying.
In contrast, David Santschi, CEO of TrimTabs Investment Research, is positioning his firm’s model stock portfolio “defensively”, saying that there are “plenty of cautionary signs”.
Indeed, recently, Bloomberg posted several charts that supposedly scare Wall Street.
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