Up up and Away!

The markets, S&P 500 and DOW, closed at record highs today. Investors are betting that the Fed will have no more rate hikes, this year, until December at the earliest. This has created anticipation, rightly or wrongly, of low interest rates for the foreseeable future and works to feed the bulls driving the markets higher.

The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) closed at 9.77, down 7.6%, its lowest level in 23 years! Banks, for the most part, did poorly Friday creating the dip on JPM. We are hopeful that will create a good return and is already up from our entry point. The S&P 500 rose 11.44 points, or 0.5%, to 2459.27, notching a weekly gain of 1.4%. The Dow industrials added 84.65 points, or 0.4%, to 21637.74 and rose 1% for the week. It was the biggest weekly gain for both indexes since late May.

For the recently ended second quarter, forecasting firm Macroeconomic Advisers projected 2.3% growth and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s high-profile GDPNow model predicted a 2.4% growth pace.