And though wages have been all but stagnant, staying just ahead of the rate of infl ation, Americans have been feeling that they have money to spend lately because of cheaper gas – last week the cost of a barrel briefl y dipped below $75 for the fi rst time in four years, and the price of oil is in the midst of its longest weekly losing streak since 1986, having fallen for seven weeks straight. In addition, U.S. oil production reached its highest level in 31 years. There was further proof in the numbers as the Commerce Department said that retail sales improved 0.3% in October after having dropped 0.3% in September, a gas-powered boost that’s expected to continue through the holiday season. If you strip out the price of gas, which fell 1.5%, the fi gure was even better, with sales rising 0.5% from the month before and 5.1% from last October.

Obama on tourPresident Obama spent the week traveling to China, Myanmar and Brisbane, Australia, for the Group of 20 meeting. Before leaving, he announced that he was going to use his presidential power to give millions of illegal immigrants work permits, a gauntlet not likely to make it any easier for him to work with the lame-duck Congress that just reconvened or the GOP majority that will take over in January. Meanwhile, the House passed

a bill to green-light the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport crude oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, a bill that, even should it survive the Senate, the president has said he would veto.

While in China, the president

level since before the recession last week, and it showed, as both the S&P 500 and the Dow continued to reach new nominal highs – through Thursday, the Dow had a remarkable run, during which it posted a record close on eight of the previous 10 trading days.

Consumer confi dence rose to its highest

MARKET COMMENTARYFOR THE WEEK OF NOVEMBER 17, 2014

Key Market DataWeek ending… 11/7/2014 11/14/2014 Change

Dow Jones Industrial Average Index

17,573.93 17,634.74 +0.35%

S&P 500 Index 2,031.92 2,039.82 +0.39%

Nasdaq Composite Index

4,632.53 4,688.54 +1.21%

10-Year Treasury Note Rate

2.301% 2.320% +1.9 basis pts.

NYMEX Crude Future (Barrel)

$78.43 $75.82 -3.60%

Euro-U.S. Dollar Exchange

$1.2455 $1.2525 +$0.0069

MSCI EAFE Index 1,798.65 1,813.19 +0.81%

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NORTHWESTERN MUTUAL WEALTH MANAGEMENT COMPANY

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concluded an agreement with his opposite number, President Xi Jinping, to reduce greenhouse gases, but the tone of the summit was frosty, and Mr. Xi used the closing press conference to chide the West for its involvement in Hong Kong’s protests and its violations of China’s censorship rules.

In Brisbane, President Obama delivered the message that the rest of the world needed to spur economic growth, an easier call to make now that the U.S. is putting up strong numbers. As Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew put it just before he left, “We’re not about to have a meltdown that will spill over into the United States and bring us into recession. On the other hand, the global economy is highly interconnected, and if things are really bad in Europe and Japan, if there’s a real slowdown in China, that’s a headwind in the United States that we don’t need.”

Putin warnedAnother president in attendance, Vladimir Putin of Russia, got a frosty reception because of his country’s latest incursion into Ukraine, and President Obama was not alone in making it clear that new sanctions were looming. Great Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron said, “If Russia continues to make matters worse, then we could see those sanctions increased, it’s as simple as that.” At the same time, Mr. Putin was contending with a plunging ruble and what he described as the “catastrophic” drop in the price of oil.

Around the eurozoneAs for that growth the president is hoping for, the eurozone didn’t contract in the third quarter, as some had feared, but GDP came in at a modest 0.6%, and there was a slowdown in Germany, the zone’s largest economy. One of the few plusses was the fact that Greece was in the black for the fi rst time in six years, mainly thanks to a strong tourist season, though the unemployment rate remained a staggering 25.9%. In another drama-in-the-making, Catalonians, defying the Spanish Supreme Court, which had declared the vote unconstitutional, nonetheless voted on a referendum to secede from Spain, with 80.7% of voters saying “si.” Spain’s Justice Minister Rafael Catalá dismissed the vote as a “useless and sterile” act.

A defi cit blipThe new fi scal year began in October with a defi cit of $121.7 billion, up $31 billion from a year earlier, the Treasury Department reported, but mainly because of a glitch that had $41 billion in benefi t payments made in October because Nov. 1 fell on a Saturday. For all of 2014, the defi cit was $483.3 billion, the lowest total since 2008.

More jobs and departuresThe Labor Department said that more than fi ve million people were hired in September, the largest total since December 2007. The number of people who quit their jobs rose from 2.5 million to 2.75 million, seen as a positive because people typically leave an old job for a new one with higher pay. Job openings fell to 4.7 million from 4.9 million, but the August total was a 14-year high. In other economic news, the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan consumer confi dence index hit 89.4, as noted, its highest level since July 2007. Both wholesale and business inventories were up 0.3% in September from a month earlier. And fi rst-time jobless claims climbed 12,000 to 290,000, while the four-week moving average was up 6,000 to 285,000.

A whopping fi neLastly, regulators from the U.S., Great Britain and Switzerland fi ned banks $4.25 billion for currency-rigging; the list includes UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, HSBC and the Royal Bank of Scotland.

A look aheadThis week’s releases will include the latest on industrial production and capital utilization, the producer and consumer price indexes, existing home sales, and housing starts and building permits. In addition, the Fed will release the minutes of its most recent meeting on Oct. 28 and 29.

MARKET COMMENTARY FOR THE WEEK OF NOVEMBER 17, 2014

MARKET COMMENTARY FOR THE WEEK OF NOVEMBER 17, 2014

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