Investors Adapting to October's Market Volatility
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What market headlines and data set the stage for October volatility?
With your Money Briefing, I'm J.R. Whalen at The Wall Street Journal in New York. October's market volatility has the most experienced investors beginning to start thinking rotation. We'll explain what that means in a moment. First, these money and market stories you should know. Housing starts fell 5.3% in September from the prior month, driven by rising borrowing costs and expensive properties that are out of reach for most Americans. Building permits also fell. They can often signal how much construction is in the pipeline. That stagnant construction is mirrored in recent readings of homebuilders' sentiment, which have pulled back throughout the year. And although home price growth has moderated in recent months, it has outpaced wage growth for years.
The medium new home sales price annual growth has ranged between 5 and 10 percent throughout 2018, whereas hourly wages have grown about 2 to 3 percent on an annual basis this year. And check out Jennifer Levitz's story in the Wall Street Journal about the awkwardness sometimes associated with tipping at the cash register, especially with white iPads often used by stores. Asking a consumer to make a snap decision to tip with the store helper looking on and with other customers in line with eavesdropping eyes can make for an uncomfortable situation. See the story on WSJ.com.
The volatility in the stock market throughout October has caused many investors to rethink their portfolios and begin employing rotation. Wall Street Journal Markets reporter Akani Ohtani is here to explain. So Akani, it essentially means investors are seeking to diversify their holdings. It's interesting how some turbulence can push us to best practices. It's not like diversification is a special concept in investing.
How are housing starts, permits and home-price trends affecting the economy?
That's right. I mean, for a long time, you've had advisors telling people that they should not just be in stocks, but also a mixture of other assets. So some folks say 60-40, 60% of your portfolio in stocks, 40% in bonds. Other folks like Warren Buffett have employed a more aggressive approach where he's famous for once having said 90% stocks, 10% short-term treasuries. But it all boils down to this assumption that you're best off if you're not just in one type of asset because it is basically it helps you ride out the storm when you start seeing market volatility.
You and Michael Worsthorn mentioned in your story that investors were spooked by the sell-off among paint and coatings companies specifically. Why is that significant?
Yeah, it's interesting because those aren't the type of bellwether companies that you typically expect investors would pay a lot of attention to compared to the banks, for instance, or big tech firms. We did hear a couple of investors mention Fastenal, which had reported disappointing earnings and blamed some of that to rising commodity prices and inflation, which cut into its profit margins. And that's the key word there, profit margins, because investors are really concerned with As interest rates rise and inflation takes higher, that we're going to start to see profit margins crimp among all types of companies, not just these sort of smaller companies in these industries like paint. So I think that's the thing that investors are really worried about at this point.
And folks you spoke to for your story say there is a lot of exposure by investors in the U.S. and in tech, but there isn't really an appetite so far to pull out of those areas altogether.
Right.
That's right. We're seeing this back and forth, especially in the month of October, where there are days where these big tech stocks, the FANG names, are up 2%, 3%, and then the next day they're down just as much.
FANG being the biggest tech stocks out there.
Right. Facebook, Alphabet, Netflix, Apple. And what that is telling us, I think, is just that there's a lot of indecision going on. Investors have broadly recognized that the tech names have run up a lot this year and that perhaps they might be due for a pullback. But no one exactly knows when that rally is going to end.
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