WEEKLY BUSINESS ROUNDUP

Global Business Week: The State of World’s Government Debt

The state of Financial markets & Economies, Weekly Charts, Business Trends & Statistics

Last Friday tuned out to be a perfect example of how bad news could become good news in financial markets. The DJIA and S&P 500 rose to record highs despite a huge miss on the April Nonfarm Payrolls (NFP) report —only 266k jobs were added to the U.S economy against the expectation of a million. The initial negative reaction in U.S futures reversed sharply higher with the opening of the market as investors took this as a sign that the Fed will remain accommodative with low-interest rates for a long time.

For the week, the Dow Jones and S&P 500 indexes closed at record highs, rising 2.7% and 1.2% respectively, but the Nasdaq ended lower for the third straight week, down 1.5%. Value stocks outpaced growth stocks for the week. Stocks of COVID-19 vaccine developers trended lower on Wednesday and Thursday after U.S. Trade Representative announced support for a waiver of intellectual property protections. Big Pharma & vaccine developers continue to present the case that waiving IP rights is not going to solve the supply chain problem.