Most of us enjoyed a short week as part of the July 4th holiday. It was a relatively quiet week from the finance perspective, with stocks being mixed throughout the week and the Dow Jones closing down 46 points to end the week. The exciting news broke on Friday when Elon Musk announced he was taking action to end his deal to acquire Twitter. After-hours trading had shares of Twitter down and Tesla stock trading up slightly. Twitter’s board has stated they will seek legal action to prevent Musk from backing out of the deal, so the coming week will be interesting as the situation develops.
On a positive note, this week, we saw gas prices continue to drop slightly. According to AAA, the weekend national average is $4.69 for regular, down from $4.82 a week ago. The decrease at the pump has been driven by the price of oil per barrel falling slightly. The current market may allow prices to continue a downward trend throughout the summer but expect gas prices to remain in the mid to low $4 range in the near term.
Looking at the housing market, we saw average 30-year mortgage rates drop slightly to a national average of 5.67%. Additionally, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) pending homes sales increased somewhat by 0.7% for May, which ended the six-month continuous decline. Even with the increase, the housing market is clearly not the same compared to last summer. With rising interest rates, high inflation, and higher overall costs for goods, many people are reevaluating selling or buying a home. As I’ve mentioned, the housing inventory is still down, which will keep home prices elevated. Home supply will take some time to catch up with demand, but next summer will be a different market.