Yahoo Finance Daily

Much of the debate around another coronavirus stimulus bill, or phase 4, has centered around how the money from the first three phases has been spent. “We have directly appropriated $3 trillion,” Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) said in a recent Yahoo Finance interview. With the Federal Reserve’s lending power added in, he said, the U.S. government actually has around $6 trillion in spending power and “most of it isn’t out the door yet.

Studies of the racial wealth gap have found that white households have between 6 and 10 times as much saved in the bank as their African-American counterparts. And that ratio has been largely unchanged (and even grown by some measures) for decades and decades. One way into tackling the problem, according to Danyelle Solomon, the vice president of Race and Ethnicity Policy at the Center for American Progress, is to look at how our retirement system is set up.

The stock market may have its blinders on at the moment as to the threat of President Trump — and his signature tax cuts — going away on Election Day in November. And because of those blinders, the market could easily be in for a sharp selloff in the months before the election if it becomes increasingly clear that Trump will lose.

As states reopen after coronavirus lockdowns, the homebuilding market is starting to bounce back. A measure of homebuilder confidence has ticked back up into the positive range, according to the National Association of Homebuilders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index. “I gotta tell you, our economists predicted that we would have a V-shaped recovery in housing, and it sure looks like we’re well on our way right now,” said National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB) CEO Jerry Howard.

The May retail sales report peeled back the curtain on the health of the U.S. consumer amid one of the worst global pandemics in modern history. Consumer spending rebounded in May following April’s record plunge. Online sales maintained their strength and spending in the beaten down core components rebounded sharply during the month. Here were the main numbers compared to Bloomberg estimates: Headline retail sales: +17.7% vs. +8.4% expected, -14.7% in April.

Before there is any form of “second wave” of COVID-19 globally, the stock market may first experience a second wave of selling as it once again prices in worse-case scenarios for economies and companies. “We think you’re more likely to see a second wave down from markets as opposed to a second wave up in COVID-19 — we have concerns here,” said FBB Capital Partners director of research on Yahoo Finance’s The First Trade.

While coronavirus cases in the former epicenter of New York have been steadily decreasing over the past few weeks, new cases are popping up in other areas of the U.S. States like Texas, California, Arizona, Arkansas, Mississippi, Utah, North Carolina, and South Carolina are seeing increased rates of positive COVID-19 tests. Many of these are being attributed to Memorial Day weekend activities, in which many crowds assembled throughout that weekend, potentially exposing themselves.

The number of jobs lost due to the coronavirus shutdown continue to mount, with the latest weekly total of Americans applying for unemployment benefits coming in above 1.5 million, yet again. The latest swath of applications brings the total amount of jobless claims to more than 44 million over the past three months, wiping out the 20 million jobs added over the last decade by a two-to-one margin.

George Floyd died on May 25, after a police officer knelt on his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds. His murder, along with the unjust deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, have ignited historic protests across the nation and dozens of countries around the world.

The market may have found its latest hot dose of speculation to rally around: the prospects that President Trump will win re-election come November. Despite the president’s botched response to the COVID-19 pandemic and social unrest now sweeping the nation — and seeing his approval numbers with Americans dip as a result — some corners of Wall Street are starting to wonder if stocks are melting up because Trump may surprise his critics yet again.

For most of Donald Trump’s presidency, a buoyant stock market has helped inoculate Trump from scandal and controversy. That pattern is breaking down. After a month-long plunge from late February to late March, stocks have surged by 44%. Yet Trump is getting no credit and his own valuation is dropping. Trump’s approval rating has fallen four percentage points since late March, to barely 41%, according to the FiveThirtyEight composite of polls.

When the stock market was in free fall back in March, Fundstrat Global Advisors founder Tom Lee made the bold call of a 25% rally by April. He was right. After that, he predicted a 50% recovery of the losses caused by the coronavirus pandemic would signal an “all-clear” that would accelerate gains to push the S&P 500 back near all-time highs. So far, he’s been right again and Friday’s surprisingly strong job report that showed U.S. payrolls unexpectedly added 2.

To investors, it makes sense. Stocks have surged 40% since late March because the worst damage from the coronavirus recession is in the past and the cavalry has arrived. The Federal Reserve is now propping up risky assets, Congress is flooding the economy with money and there are wee signs of an economic recovery. If you’re an ordinary person who thinks the soaring stock market is crazy, you’re right. There’s no right or wrong value for any stock, or for the market as a whole.

Americans are still wondering if a second round of stimulus checks is coming as Congress struggles to agree on new aid amid an ongoing pandemic and widespread protests against police brutality. Experts generally agree that more stimulus is needed, though some say another round of stimulus checks for Americans is not the best option. But they diverged on what stimulus specifically is needed.

The convergence of the coronavirus recovery and mass protests against police brutality continued to grip the nation on Tuesday, spurring rising concerns from public health officials about the virus’s spread. Globally, the virus has affected 6.3 million individuals and killed more than 376,000. In the U.S., while daily cases remain largely flat, the case count has climbed well past 1.8 million, and the death toll has now surpassed 105,000.