by Ralph Cole, CFA
Executive Vice President of Research
Melt with You
It feels like the market is melting up these days as stocks continued their year-long rise during the shortened holiday week. Investors continue to be heartened by positive economic data signaling stronger growth as we enter 2014. Durable goods orders were up 3.5 percent in November with automobiles, airplanes and refrigerators helping drive end demand. Also, new home sales remain robust with record-setting sale prices. Both of these data points hit on some important topics for our 2014 Investment Outlook. Specifically, we think demand for capital equipment will finally accelerate in 2014 due to underinvestment and substantial cash balances on corporate and consumer balance sheets. Furthermore, consumers are increasing their spending as a result of the “wealth effect” that has been fueled by increased home and stock prices.
Crosstown Traffic
Our investment team has been writing for some time about the shift to online shopping and this trend came to a head this week for Amazon and UPS. For those of us who like to start shopping closer to Christmas, Amazon Prime© seems like the perfect solution. For an annual fee of $79.00, Amazon provides two-day free shipping on most merchandise. We don’t think anyone is surprised to learn that we live in an era of procrastinating techno-geeks who wait until the last minute to ship gifts. This time, the sheer volume of orders overwhelmed both Amazon and UPS. Though UPS has not stated how many packages were affected, the number seems to be in the hundreds of thousands. While both Amazon and UPS are doing what they can to satisfy customers, the real story is the volume shift to cyberspace. Amazon signed up over 1 million additional Prime© customers in the third week of Christmas alone. This is a nice development for Amazon because these shoppers tend to spend twice as much in a given year as those who don’t have Amazon Prime©.
Our Takeaways for the Week
- Christmas week was just another reason for investors to keep bidding up stock prices
- Interest rates continue to move slowly higher on Fed taper talk