On Thursday, March 11, 2021, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA 2021) was signed into law. This is a $1.9 trillion emergency relief package that includes payments to individuals and funding for federal programs, vaccines and testing, state and local governments, and schools.
On Sunday, December 27, 2020, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (CAA 2021) was signed into law. A $900 billion emergency relief package is included as part of this omnibus spending bill. It is intended to assist individuals and businesses during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and accompanying economic crisis. Major relief provisions are summarized here, as well as some additional tax provisions.
Treasury rates have ticked higher in recent weeks, due to investor worries about a pickup in inflation. This is not a new concern, but has gained steam as a large ($1.9 tril.) stimulus package appears to be on the verge of passage in Congress, as well as the economy showing signs of broader recovery otherwise, with help from prior stimulus.
We don’t like to spend too much time on market anomalies, let alone individual stocks that fall outside long-term asset allocation principles, but this seems to have taken over the headlines last week. Rarely do stock market quirks become mainstream news; in this case, it carried over to market sentiment to some extent and definitely raised trading volumes.
Each year naturally brings more surprises than certainties, so outlooks and predictions of any kind quickly become futile. (We’ve already experienced a dramatic and unusual first week of January.) At least at this point in time, noted are a few key issues to monitor as 2021 gets going:
The prior weekend, Congress had agreed on a $900+ bil. Covid relief package, approved by both chambers a few days later, and finally signed by the President last night. This had been in the works for months, with a few key sticking points causing the long delay and repeated breakdowns in negotiations between Democrats and Republicans.
It’s a new high, but not dissimilar to celebrating say, 29,999 as a new peak, although the odd number didn’t receive the same level of media attention. These round market levels, whether it be the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Nasdaq, or others, tend to generate high visibility (especially in the slower post-election news cycle). If an index is old enough, and tends to show positive performance (as stocks have over the long haul), you’ll end up reaching new and higher milestones.
The Oregon Employment Department (OED) has announced that as of November 24th, they have started issuing waiting week payments to eligible Oregonians.
Whether or not an asset class is in a bubble is difficult to answer in real-time, since sentiment can change course as quickly as a few weeks, or take years. In hindsight, these things are always more obvious. The question can be viewed through a few different perspectives:
It’s difficult to imagine functioning in today’s world without credit. Whether buying a car or purchasing a home, credit has become an integral part of our everyday lives. Having easy access to credit goes hand in hand with having a good credit score, so it’s important to know how to maintain a positive credit score and credit history.