Another Wild Week...With Not Much Change

The markets ended the week with a slight loss of 0.7%. This masked a rather volatile week. Earlier on, the market lost 2% in value from the prior week, than rebounded almost 3% during the middle of the week before settling back for a loss on Friday and closing out with the 0.7% net weekly loss mentioned previously. Causes for the back and forth action? Inflation numbers (market down), stronger economic growth numbers (market up), Dell Computer earnings worse than expected (market down again). With labor day over, the old adage is that traders will come back to Wall Street from summer vacations, and the market will see greater activity, but also a more focused direction. We have continued economic numbers, a presidential election and a new batch of earnings numbers coming in the months ahead. Should be an interesting time.