The stock market sauntered to its third straight weekly win last week, but now the public servants in Washington just might help usher it to a weekly loss.
The federal government shutdown is poised to stretch into a third day Monday as negotiations over immigration continued to roil Capitol Hill.
“A government shutdown, even a brief one, could reintroduce investors to the fact that markets go down as well,” said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com, in an interview with NBC News last week. He expressed concerns about the coming week.
“Any government shutdown that persisted into the work week would breed plenty of the type of uncertainty that can rattle investors’ confidence,” said McBride, whose take served as a call of the day for our Need to Know column.
But pundits also are warning long-term investors against knee-jerk reactions to anything that happens in DC.
Historically, shutdowns have not been major occasions for selling, notes a MarketWatch article. The Credit Suisse charts below (h/t Daily Shot) suggest that as well.
Traders on Twitter have even mocked Thursday’s “huge selloff in stocks” (the S&P plunged 0.2%) that was blamed on shutdown concerns.
“When the market wants to correct, it can latch on to a reason of its choice,” tweets TJM broker Jim Iuorio.
In other words, this Teflon market simply may need a breather after posting a positive total return in every single month last year.
Read more: Here’s what would happen if the government shuts down
The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.21% , S&P 500 SPX, +0.44% and Nasdaq Composite COMP, +0.55% scored fresh all-time closing highs last week, supported by improving economic data, growing corporate profits and the recently-passed bill that will cut corporate tax rates.
Stock futures early Monday were pointing to modest losses at the open, with Dow futures YMH8, -0.18% down by 55 points, or 0.2%.