NYSE partially reopens trading floorwith new safety and legal requirements.
May 28: U.S. surpasses 100,000 deathsfrom the coronavirus.
A Minneapolis police station is set onfire, the National Guard is broughtin, and then mostly peaceful protestsresume. By this point, protests are taking place regularly in Portland, Oregon,and many other cities nationwide.
June 1: The Fed discloses purchasessome $1.3 billion worth of investment-grade and high-yield ETFs in mid-Maymanaged by BlackRock (iShares),which heads the Fed’s ETF purchaseprogram, as well as from Vanguard,State Street Global Advisors, Van Eck,and Xtrackers, a subsidiary of DeutscheBank. Investment-grade ETFs accountfor 83% of the assets. The purchases,part of the Fed’s Secondary MarketCorporate Credit Facility, aim to support the corporate bond market duringthe pandemic-fueled market tumult.
June 8: The National Bureau ofEconomic Research declares February2020 as the official end of the U.S. economic expansion and beginning of arecession. “The expansion lasted 128months, the longest in the history of U.S.business cycles dating back to 1854,”NBER says. The previous recordwas 120 months, running fromMarch 1991 to March 2001.
June 11: Dow fallsabout 7% on fearsof a second wave ofCOVID- 19.
June 12: A videotape goes viral ofRobert Larkins and his wife LisaAlexander complaining and callingpolice over a Black Lives Matter sign inSan Francisco. Larken, then a RaymondJames managing director of publicfinance, is fired three days later.
June 17: NYSE allows a limited number of market market makers to returnto the trading floor.
June 19: The IRS shares more detailson who is eligible for enhanced accessto retirement distributions and loansunder the CARES Act.
June 20: Protests continue nationwide over the death of George Floyd(May 25), Breonna Taylor (March 13in Louisville, Kentucky) and AhmaudArbery (Feb. 23 near Brunswick,Georgia). The protests in support ofBlack Lives Matter have occurred in atleast 1,600 locations so far this year.
June 22: The Fed indicates it will holdthe federal funds rate within its current
0–0.25% range through 2022 or “untilit is confident that the economy hasweathered recent events and is on trackto achieve its maximum employmentand price stability goals.”
June 30: Hours before the PPP is setexpire, Treasury Secretary Mnuchinsays the Treasury Department supportslegislation to “repurpose” those fundsand has been in talks with the Senate’ssmall-business committee about howto proceed. The Senate subsequentlypasses an extension of the program toAug. 8, which the House approves.
July 16: CFP Board says itwill add a remote proctoringoption for the Sept. 22–29
CFP exam.
July 29: The Fed says it will
extend all pandemic-related
lending facilities through year-
end. The Internal Revenue Service
issues final regulations on limits to the
deduction for business interest expens-
es, including basic statutory amend-
ments in the CARES Act; the limits
apply to taxes in 2018 and afterwards.
The Securities and Exchange
Commission creates a new exam team
to focus on emerging risks and cur-
rent events and be part of the agency’s
Office of Compliance Inspections and
Examinations.
July 30: Commerce Department statesthat the U.S. gross domestic productcontracted by about 33% in the secondquarter, mainly due to the pandemic.
Aug. 13: The Labor Department givesguidance to help states implementthe Lost Wages Assistance (LWA)program, which provides claimantsin most Unemployment Insuranceprograms with up to $400 per week ofextra benefits from around Aug. 1 toDec. 27.
Aug. 14: The IRS reopens registration for families who did not receivethe $500-per-child payments they areentitled to under the CARES Act.
Aug. 28: The Dow Jones erases itslosses for the year to date, and the S&P
500 and Nasdaq indexes hit new recordcloses, one day after news of the Fed’spolicy shift to allow employment andinflation to run higher than in the past.
Aug. 31: A multi-system market outage affects many trading platforms asApple enacts a 4: 1 stock split, Teslasplits its shares 5: 1, and the Dow JonesIndustrial Average drops Exxon Mobil,Pfizer and Raytheon Technologies andadds Salesforce, Amgen and HoneywellInternational.
Sept. 9: IRS plans to start mailingletters to about 9 million Americansreminding them to register by Oct. 15 inorder to receive their Economic ImpactPayments (as part of the CARES Act).
Sept. 11: The Justice Department saysit has charged 57 defendants for allegedly committing fraud to obtain over
$175 million from the PPP, causingsome $70 million in actual governmentlosses. The DOJ has recovered or frozen over $30 million.
