As economic data has been released this month, the news has been very grim.
Yesterday the weekly new unemployment claims were released and the numbers were higher than expected.
2.981 millions new workers filed for unemployment, bringing the total to 36.5 million new claims due to the coronavirus recession. As you can see, the amount of weekly claims has declined, but is still significantly higher than anything seen in the past.
Today, the retail sales numbers were released for the month of April. Sales fell 16.4%, about 33% higher than economists had anticipated. This is a record monthly decline since retail sales data has been kept. Various types of retailers saw decreases ranging from -3.5% to -78.8%. The only positive came from non-store retailers saw an 8.4% increase from the prior month.
At the writing of this post, stocks are down for day, but less than when the sales numbers were released. If the stock market does not rally, stocks will be negative for the week.
The question still remains as to whether stocks will continue to trend up after the market lows in March, or whether this bear market will follow the typical recession led bear market pattern and have another severe market downturn before the recession ends. So far the market has mostly turned a blind eye to most of the negative economic data.
