The big economic event of the week, the Federal Reserve Symposium in Jackson Hole gets underway shortly. As a prelude to the event, the S&P 500 has enjoyed a four-day rally that took it to new intraday and closing record highs. The featured topic for this year's symposium is "Re-Evaluating Labor Market Dynamics." And speaking of the labor market, this morning's new jobless claims came in at 298K and its 4-week moving average is hovering around a level that was last sustained in first half of 2006. The S&P 500 opened fractionally high and drifted higher to 0.42% intraday record high. Some selling in the final hour trimmed the gain to 0.29%.
Treasuries rose slightly. The yield on the 10-year Note closed at 2.42%, down 3 bps from yesterday's close.
Here is a 15-minute chart of the past five sessions.
Volume for the four-day pre-Jackson Hole rally has been light.
A Perspective on Drawdowns
The chart below incorporates a percent-off-high calculation to illustrate the drawdowns greater than 5% since the trough in 2009.
For a longer-term perspective, here is a pair of charts based on daily closes starting with the all-time high prior to the Great Recession.
