A lot of negative headlines flying around the first week of the New Year and today did not help with US indexes logging their third consecutive down day in 2024. We have seen the “Mag 7” referred to as the “Lag 7” due to an underwhelming start and now “dry January” to describe the overall start to the year. If we can just take a deep breath here and not do what everyone thinks we are going to do and freak out. Despite their slow starts to 2024, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 are still up 11.8% and…

A sea of red for the third consecutive trading day as the Santa rally may have left the building. Rather uneventful on the news front, however geopolitical headlines out of the Middle East sounded ominous but oil managed to remain steady throughout today’s session. Rotation out of tech, a slew of data, and FOMC minutes were in focus. Fed minutes showed us the Fed still has a restrictive stance as they see policy rate near or at peak, and open to cuts 2H24. Further on the macro front, small miss…

And just like that… we’re back! A fresh new year is upon us and much like the drop of the ball in Times Square at midnight, stocks fell mostly lower in a bit of an anticlimactic start to 2024. After nine consecutive weeks of gains for the S&P, one could argue that today’s fall was inevitable. We have only seen such a rally three different times since the 80’s and- fun fact- in 1985, the winning streak continued for an additional 4% to clock an impressive 12 week stretch of gains. With much…

**As per holiday tradition, the View will be going on hiatus for the last two weeks of the year. Most importantly, we genuinely want to thank you for your continued support this year and years past. Wishing you all a happy holidays and healthy/safe New Year.**

Call it another “win” for US equity markets today as the gains continued on for day 1-2-3-4-5-Six! of consecutive advances on the S&P. I should add that we did get a rather abrupt about-face midday where we saw indices reverse course and hit the red momentarily before recovering again on their merry way, assumingly higher. Little was unearthed when investigating the sudden shift, pause, or stall- whichever you prefer- aside from some mention of rotation and positioning. Ultimately, the Fed “…

Copy and Paste! The December FOMC statement was nearly identical to November’s and too be expected with key economic data points roughly staying the same over the past two months as the committee held rates at the current levels. BUT the statement was cast aside like socks as a gift on Christmas morning for a brighter and shinier 2024 dot plot. In a surprise move away from the “higher for longer” theme, FOMC participants now see the medium Fed Funds rate for 2024 at 4.6% compared to 5.1% previo…

Investors are data dependent like their Fed counterparts and today’s CPI print offered nothing dastardly. As the first group maintains the outlook of cuts are coming, the latter is pushing back in their resolve to keep rates higher. Tomorrow’s FOMC will provide an update on those themes. Back to the CPI. The data was relatively inline as the core m/m rose 0.1% versus estimates of 0.0%, while the y/y was 3.1% (inline). The prints were not enough to shake the recent market momentum and equities r…

A rather quiet day as stocks started out mixed, ultimately extending gains for today’s session showing more evidence of breadth improvement within US equities. Another BIG day of rotation within tech was made apparent, in particular strong outperformance of ‘hardware’ semiconductors vs ‘software’ . As previously stated by my well hearalded colleague Ben Denney, “still plenty of room to rotate further back within the past 2yrs range following the huge ‘software’ outperformance from the August ‘2…

The robust nature of the recent rally was evident Friday even in the face of some confronting macro this morning.

US markets shook the frost off their bones today, ignored the losses suffered over the past few days and pushed higher with the Nasdaq outperforming its peers with help from everybody’s favorite topic AI. Two companies commanded the headlines today with Alphabet (+5.3%) receiving a warm response from the street after its release of the AI model “Gemini” and Advanced Micro Devices (+9.8%) announcing its anticipated MI300 chip line up along with the CEO saying the AI chip industry could climb to…