Growth stocks and exchange traded funds turned it around from the early morning selling on Thursday after unexpectedly strong retail sales data pointed to the underlying momentum in the U.S. economic recovery.
“Looking at today, clearly we had positive news from retail sales and it looks as if the massive slowdown in the economy is not materializing as a lot of people expected,” Ryan Detrick, senior market strategist at LPL Financial, told Reuters. “It’s a nice reminder that the economy is still taking two steps forward for each step back even amid the COVID concerns.”
Retail sales rose 0.7% in August, a sign of resilience despite the rising infection rates of the COVID-19 Delta variant that many worried would hamper growth, the Wall Street Journal reports. Economists previously expected retail sales to decline.
“It can make consumers less confident to spend, for example, if they have some uncertainty about where the economy is headed based on what happens with case loads,” Lisa Erickson, co-head of the public markets group at U.S. Bank Wealth Management, told the WSJ.
However, the number of Americans applying for first-time unemployment benefits increased for the week ended September 11 to 332,000 from 312,000 in the previous week, which weighed on the markets on Thursday.
“This summer and then into the fall, it’s all been about Delta,” Jim Smigiel, chief investment officer at asset management firm SEI, told the WSJ. “We’ve been in this back and forth and back and forth, and we’re seeing more of that today.”
Investors interested in the growth style can turn to targeted strategies like the American Century Focused Dynamic Growth ETF (FDG). FDG is a high-conviction strategy that invests in early-stage, rapid-growth companies with a competitive advantage and high profitability, growth, and scalability.
Additionally, investors can look to the American Century STOXX U.S. Quality Growth ETF (QGRO). QGRO’s stock selection process is broken down into high-growth stocks based on sales, earnings, cash flow, and operating income, along with stable-growth stocks based on growth, profitability, and valuation metrics.
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