The Markets (as of market close January 10, 2020)
Last Friday's jobs report was a mixed bag of information. While 145,000 new jobs were added and the unemployment rate remained at 3.5%, wage growth was tepid in December to cap off a year of only moderate wage growth. This information, coupled with news that the Senate would receive the articles of impeachment this week, culled what was otherwise a strong week for stocks. The Dow passed 29000 earlier last week only to pull back by week's end. In any case, most of the indexes listed here posted gains last week, except for the small caps of the Russell 2000, which has gotten off to a relatively slow start in 2020. Conversely, the tech-heavy Nasdaq continues to post strong returns, climbing 1.75% last week and 2.30% ahead of its 2019 closing value.
Oil prices plummeted last week, closing at $59.14 per barrel by late Friday afternoon, down from the prior week's price of $63.05. The price of gold (COMEX) rose higher again last week, closing at $1,561.60 by late Friday afternoon, up from the prior week's price of $1,553.30. The national average retail regular gasoline price was $2.578 per gallon on January 6, 2020, $0.007 more than the prior week's price and $0.341 more than a year ago.