While June and July are traditionally thought of as a time of fun and leisure, many Americans instead redirected their focus to aggressively reducing their outstanding debt during the first 2 months of summer.  The government reported last week that Americans cut debt by $37 billion over the period, including a record $22 billion reduction in the month of July alone.  Economists had expected the drop in July to be only $4 billion (source: Federal Reserve). 
 
The 12 nations that make up OPEC met last week and decided to leave their daily oil production quotas unchanged.  Even though the price of oil has increased by +55% since the first of the year, the worldwide demand for oil is down by more than 4 million barrels a day over what had been anticipated, creating a global glut in crude oil (source: Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries).  
 
The US stock market continues its notable climb.  The S&P 500 is up +17.6% YTD (total return), having gained +2.3% already this month.  An increase in the value of the stock index for all of September would be its 7th consecutive advancing month.  Since hitting a bear market low in early March of this year, the stock index has gained a remarkable +56.0%.  The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index of 500 widely held stocks that is generally considered representative of the US stock market (source: BTN Research).