Thursday Bounce Extending Into Friday On Reopening Optimism, But Retail Sales Fall Short

Thursday Bounce Extending Into Friday On Reopening Optimism, But Retail Sales Fall Short

Your vocabulary word for the day is "boing." Definition: The sound the stock market makes when it's bouncing. Early indications from the futures market this morning suggest stocks may end the week on a high note as investors continue to be in buy-the-dip mode. But there's still a ways to go if the market hopes to erase the steep losses from earlier in the week. This seems to be another page in the narrative we've been seeing for a while where investors are trying to figure out valuations based on two main fronts. The first is a continued tug of war between reopening stocks and those that could benefit if something happens to derail the domestic Covid-19 recovery. The second is whether a spike in inflation will be a long-term thing or just temporary (or "transitory" in Fed-speak). Uncertainty about those issues seems to continue to inject some caution into the market. While risk assets like stocks and oil are higher and the Cboe Volatility Index (VIX) is falling, demand for relatively safe U. S. government debt is up. Though the 10-year Treasury yield flirted with 1. 7% earlier this week on inflation news, this morning it finds itself below