Another gain. Another day, another new all time high for the KBW NASDAQ fintech index. Rinse, repeat over and over. Skepticism and logic have long been thrown out the window. Oh well, to be sure this closing of the KFTX today at 1151.01 is a gain of +4.01 points (+0.35%) and (all together) “a new all time high”. Moving on.

Friday saw 36 issues up, 13 down and 1 unchanged. Out of those 50 stocks let’s list the ones that moved 2 or more points and/or 3% in today’s session.

ADS

+2.39

(244.81)

DNB

-2.62

(105.60)

HAWK

-1.30 (36.60)

-3.43%

PAY

+.77 (20.84)

+3.84%

RATE

-.45 (11.15)

-3.88%

So, that’s a wrap for this Friday and the end of a short week.

OK, now let’s take a brief look at the week that was. Three of the four days were up days and the lone down day was Tuesday and even that day was

only off a couple pennies (basically unchanged). So, the short week actually produced a strong 17.26 point gain for the KFTX, a nice +1.45% rise. How did it do that? Let’s take a peek at the stocks that had a 3% change on the week.

ACIW

(20.29)

+3.41%

ADS

(244.81)

+5.98%

BOFI

(30.84)

+3.63%

EEFT

(83.45)

+3.49%

FIS

(83.84)

+3.11%

FISV

(116.30)

+4.88%

GDOT

(29.48)

+8.59%

HAWK

(36.60)

+5.92%

JKHY

(94.70)

+3.55%

LC

(5.45) -5.47%

(first loser on the list)

PAY

(20.84)

+7.59%

RATE

(11.15)

-3.46%

SQ

(17.43) +25.02%

(

whopper percentage gain of the week)

TREE

(123.40)

+6.10%

TRI

(42.70)

-4.71%

VIRT

(17.55)

-5.75%

(

biggest percentage loser of the week)

WETF

(9.05)

+3.78%

WU

(20.17)

+3.65%

Only four losers on the list of percentage changes, and overall for the week, there were 38 stocks up and 12 down which is pretty nice breadth.

Looking ahead for next week, Tuesday night brings an address by new President Trump to a joint session of congress which typically lays out a vision and kind of a priority list of what the new administration wants to accomplish. Don’t know if it will affect markets BUT, for sure, it will be interesting. Best guess? Sleepy markets (yeah, fintech too) with a drift up bias BUT, as said before, this “air” is way too rarified for me to be a buyer.

CAUTION!

Oh, one last comment/question. If economic growth is going to “explode” to 3%-4%, inflation picks up and the Fed hikes rates, why has the 10 year rate gone down lately (2.3%-2.4% Friday)? Hmmmmmmm!! ———— By Bill Taylor-CEO, FintekNews & CIO, TLC Capital Group