FOMC (in)Action Does Nothing for Wall Street; 1Q GDP Weak

Apologies again for the brevity of this missive. We are currently under severe time restraints, though the thought of a more regular schedule appears for next week. -Editor

The week can be summed up as "much ado about nothing," as the FOMC again held the federal fund rate at near-zero and stocks were more or less unresponsive over the course of the week.

A preliminary reading of first quarter GDP showed the economy nearly slipping into recession, growing at a rate of just 0.2% for the first three months of 2015. The outlier was a three percent inventory build, without which the number would have been negative. Naturally, naysayers on the economy contend that the recession for the US economy never ended after 2009, and that the United States has been mired in a deep depression since the implosion of the financial system back in the fall of 2008 and that only extreme dosages of liquidity supplied by the central bankers of the world have saves us all from misery.

Wall Street continues to hum along with record amounts of stock buybacks buoying share prices for many firms, with growth and capital expenditures now becoming things of the past.

The first three days of trading were somewhat lackluster, followed by a huge downdraft on Thursday and a dead-cat monster bounce-back on Friday, which kept the major indices from outright implosion. Analysts are keeping a keen eye on the German DAX, which is coming close to correction territory.

The NASDAQ was the worst-performer, dropping nearly two percent as biotechs imploded and speculative money was coming off the table at a rapid rate.

For the week ending May 1:

Dow: 18.024.06, -56.08 (-0.31)
S&P 500: 2,108.29, -9.40 (-0.44)
NASDAQ: 5,005.39, -86.69 (-1.70)