SEC Brings The Hammer and Jackson Hole Goes Virtual Due to Delta

Markets are at an all time high before Jerome Powell’s speech today at Jackson Hole. Many Fed watchers believe that the virulent delta variant of Covid 19 will tie the Fed’s hands and they will not begin to taper by the end of the year. The Fed is taking the delta variant seriously as the Jackson Hole monetary policy symposium was changed to a virtual event.

Highlights From This Week’s Earnings

S&P 500 - On Wednesday the S&P 500 closed at an all time high. After 51 all time highs in 2021 several large Wall Street firms have raised their price targets for the S&P 500 this month. On Thursday the S&P 500 closed at $4,470.00 down -0.58%.

On August 2nd the Chief Investment Strategist at Oppenheimer raised the firm’s S&P 500 large to 4,700.  On August 23rd UBS raised their S&P 500 target to 4,600 by the end of the year and 5,000 by the end of 2022. On Tuesday, Wells Fargo set a price large on the S&P 500 at 4825 and UBS set a large of 4,600 for 2021 and 5,000 for 2022. Earlier in the month Goldman Sachs raised their target on the S&P 500 to 4,700 after the index hit their previous target of 4,300. Goldman also raised their target price on the index to 4,900 for 2022.

SEC Warns China of Possible Delisting & Further Scrutiny

On Tuesday the SEC chair, Gary Gensler warned Chinese companies that they will face more disclosures and scrutiny or risk being delisted from the NYSE and Nasdaq as soon as 2024. During the interview Gensler pledged to strictly enforce a three year deadline that would require Chinese firms to permit inspections of their financial audits.

As a refresher, understand that in December 2020 the US Congress passed a law called the “Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act.” This law requires companies that have US exchange listings to state if they are owned or controlled by a foreign government and allow inspections by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board or risk delisting. This law was passed in the Senate by unanimous consent in May of 2020 and passed by the US House by  unanimous voice vote on December 2nd 2020.

EU Might Say No Thank You To US Travelers

On Thursday Slovenian representatives are expected to ask the EU to reimpose travel restrictions on US residents into the European Union. The United States has had an infection rate of 507 new positive cases per 100,000 residents during the past 14 days. This number is above the guidelines the EU has set for citizens to be eligible to enter the EU for non-essential purposes.

AMC & GME Are Back On The Bull

AMC and GME have their mojo back. To illustrate this, look at their 30 day average trading volume (we call this ADTV) and compare it to Tuesday and Wednesday's volume. As of Thursday, the 30 day average volume in AMC was 96,467,592 shares and the 30 day average volume in GME was 3,166,032 shares.  AMC traded over 200 million shares on Tuesday and Wednesday and GME traded 14.6 million shares on Tuesday and 12.8 million shares on Wednesday.

About the Writer

My name is Allen Spence and I have been working in the retail brokerage industry for over 16 years. I joined Alpaca in March of 2021 as a Brokerage Operations Consultant. Before joining Alpaca I have worked in a retail branch environment, call center for active traders, and spent over seven and a half years as the team lead on an equity trading desk for a large regional broker dealer. I’m excited to be at Alpaca helping bring the markets to investors worldwide. I live in Florida and enjoy traveling and spending time with my family.

About Alpaca

Alpaca is a globally distributed financial technology company that is democratizing global access to financial markets starting with our API-first stock brokerage. Alpaca offers commission-free stock trading via API, a suite of developer APIs for brokerages, advisors, and startups, as well as a market data API.

This article is solely for informational purposes only and any historical returns, expected returns or projections are hypothetical in nature. Investments in securities involve the risk of losses and past performance does not guarantee future results. Before investing you should carefully consider your investment objectives, time horizon, and overall risk tolerance as well as the information stated in the product offering prospectuses.