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Last week was all “Can’t stop, won’t stop” for risk assets. Equities pushed even higher with the S&P 500 making gains every day, and the NASDAQ hitting another all-time high. After hitting all-time lows in yield, Treasuries backed up slightly. It is hard to reconcile all-time highs in stocks and all-time lows in Treasury yields, but there it is. Investment-grade and high-yield bonds tightened significantly, as the market gobbled up new issue as if they will not make them anymore. The backdrop this week was the breakdown of stimulus talks between The White House and the Democratic House.

What Happened

It was another schizophrenic week for the markets. With COVID-19 continuing its rampage across the nation, the Fed pulling no punches on how perilous the economic road ahead is, a lack of a second stimulus plan from the White House and Congress, another week of increasing initial jobless claims, and the visual shock of a 33% contraction of 2^nd Quarter U.S. GDP, and safe-haven assets like Treasury notes and gold hitting all-time low yields and high prices, respectively.

COVID-19 has created unique challenges for the home appraisal process—nationwide shelter-in-place orders and social distancing guidelines have made it difficult for appraisers to do on-site inspections, which means that turnaround times and appraisal fees have increased due to COVID-related backlog.

Yesterday I went shopping, buddy, down to the mall
Looking for something pretty I could hang on my wall.
I knocked over a lamp, before it hit the floor I caught it,
A salesman turned around, said, "Boy, you break that thing you bought it." –Bruce Springsteen

What Happened?

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. The NASDAQ hit another all-time high last Monday and then proceeded to trade down nearly 4% by week’s end. Tesla—the world’s most valuable car company—did the same thing, hitting a new high on Monday and then down 14% by the end of the week. As the week wore on, the bad COVID-19 news (which started the week bad and then got worse), the realization that a lot of lifelines that were thrown to a battered populace are expiring very soon and the Republican Senate and the Republican White House can’t agree on a plan, let alone deal with the Democratic House plan.

What Happened:

Equities were mixed this week as tech stocks seemed to take a breather from their furious multi-week rally. Earnings season is upon us and we had major banks reporting. The crazy volatility in equity and fixed income markets, combined with the fee income associated with historic bond underwriting pumped up trading and underwriting earnings for the banks. However, large consumer banks like Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase put aside billions for expected consumer and commercial loan losses.

What Happened:

Despite worsening COVID news, stocks—particularly tech stocks—managed to explode higher for the week with the NASDAQ hitting another all-time high on Friday. Nationwide, daily COVID cases rose to 60,000 per day with Texas, Florida, Arizona, and California leading the way. If this looks familiar to last week’s market summary… it is! We just replaced “holiday-shortened week” and instead of 50,000 COVID cases a day, we are now at 60,000.

“So I'll meet you at the bottom if there really is one
They always told me when you hit it you'll know it
But I've been falling so long it's like gravity's gone and I'm just floating.” –Drive By Truckers

It goes without saying that the first quarter of 2020 has been tumultuous across the board. While it can be difficult to keep up, having a solid pulse on the auto finance market can help increase your financial institution’s auto loan portfolio. Experian recently released their State of the Automotive Finance Market report from Q1 of 2020. I'd like to share some highlights of the report with you and offer insight for your financial institution on the state of the auto finance market going forward into the second quarter of this most unusual year.

What Happened:

Despite worsening COVID-19 news, stocks managed to explode higher for the holiday-shortened week with the NASDAQ hitting another all-time high on Thursday. Nationwide, daily COVID cases rose to 50,000 per day with Texas, Florida, Arizona, and California leading the way. In response, all four states rolled back a fair amount of their economic reopening plans. To some degree, we are seeing the worst-case scenario where we start reopening, virus transmission picks back up, and we have to shut it down again.