John Hancock: Weekly Market Recap Week Ended December 13th
Tariff rollback
A preliminary agreement announced on Friday between U.S. and Chinese trade negotiators includes a withdrawal of new U.S. tariffs that had been scheduled to take effect on Sunday, December 15. China will also remove tariffs, and rates on an earlier round of U.S. tariffs will drop from 15.0% to 7.5%—not as much as many observers had expected.
Edging higher
U.S. stocks rallied on Thursday but were little changed the rest of the week, and the major indexes ended up with overall gains of slightly less than 1%. The results extended the market’s generally positive direction since early October—a trend that has sent indexes to new record high
Steady Fed
The board of the U.S. Federal Reserve unanimously agreed to keep interest rates unchanged, and projections indicate that most members expect to leave rates at current levels through 2020, absent any big shifts in their currently favorable economic outlook.
Euro outlook
The European Central Bank kept rates unchanged at Christine Lagarde’s first meeting as its president. Bank stocks and government bond yields rose after Lagarde signaled her optimism about economic growth prospects in the eurozone.
Source: https://www.jhinvestments.com/weekly-market-recap