Let's get set up for another busy week ahead. The January nonfarm payrolls report showed 467 thousand new jobs added last month, way higher than estimates for gains of around 150 thousand. The unemployment rate crept back up to 4% from 3.9% because more people said they're looking for work. Is the labor market stabilizing at long last? Keep in mind, 22 million U.S. jobs were lost between March and April of 2020. 19.1 million jobs have been added back, now 2.9 million below that high, and there are 10.9 million job openings in the United States right now.
Investors will have little time to keep scratching their heads from last week's shocker of a jobs report because new inflation numbers are coming this week. The Department of Labor will deliver the read on consumer prices on Thursday, and economists are forecasting those prices to rise 7.3%. That would be the highest rate of inflation since 1981. What is inflation doing to consumer confidence? It fell to a 10-year low last month, and we'll get a fresh reading on it this Friday, when the University of Michigan will release a preliminary reading of its Consumer Sentiment Index for the month of February.
Jeremy Siegel is the Russell E. Palmer professor emeritus of finance at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Jeremy is also the bestselling author of several books, including Stocks for the Long Run, and a frequent contributor across multiple business media outlets. Additionally, he was an advisor to WisdomTree Investments and is the co-creator of the Siegel-WisdomTree Longevity Model Portfolio, which was designed to outperform a traditional 60/40 portfolio.
The past few weeks have put investors' patience and resolve to the test. A correction in the Nasdaq and the Russell 2000, 1,000 point intraday swings in the Dow industrials, the fading of meme stocks and biotechs, you name it. One test after the other. Long-term investors know to ride these waves out. But no matter how patient you are, no matter how long your time horizon, volatility and the lack of visibility ratchet up anxiety and awaken our animal spirits. But what if we really leaned into the long term? What if we zoomed way out and looked at the macro trends that are actually more important than market cycles than the daily ticks of the market?
Our guest this week is the ultimate long-term market voyager. Jeremy Siegel is the Russell E. Palmer professor of finance at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He's also the co-creator of the Siegel-WisdomTree Longevity Model Portfolio with WisdomTree. He's a bestselling author, including his epic book Stocks for the Long Run, which is in the Investing Hall of Fame. He's a frequent guest across business media, and he is our very, very special guest on the Investopedia Express.
"I've been following your work for so many years and so honored to have a few minutes with you to share with our listeners. But let's talk about how investing through the pandemic changed the way we think about investing for the long term. Everything feels so compressed these days. Markets correct then reversed then fall apart, all in a matter of days or weeks. Is this normal?"
You must be logged in to post a comment.