Stocks suffered their largest weekly decline since the start of a year, due almost entirely to a sharp sell-off on Friday. Friday’s plunge marked the end of an extended period of light trading activity and relatively stable stock prices. For the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell -406 points to 18,085 down -2.2%. The NASDAQ Composite declined more than -123 points to 5,125, down -2.36%. LargeCaps did better than SmallCaps and MidCaps for the first time in a while: the S&P 500 LargeCap index ended down -2.39%, while the S&P 400 MidCap index lost ‑3.19%, and the SmallCap Russell 2000 lost over -2.61%.
The housing market continues to power ahead month after month as prices rise and inventories continue to shrink. However, real estate consultant John Burns has dug deeper into the numbers and noted that while the housing market continues to move ahead (mostly on limited supply), a generation of home buyers is being left behind. His research notes that home ownership rates have fallen across all age groups since the housing collapse in 2009, but the biggest drop has occurred in the millennial generation. Burns predicts that the homeownership rates will continue to fall through 2025, meaning that millennials will be renting or living with their parents a lot longer than their own parents did