While the world was still digesting yesterday’s US Presidential election, The Fed quietly forged ahead, continuing to execute their existing action plan (“today is Fed Day!?”), cutting rates by 25bps as widely expected. This time, there were no dissenters (last cut there was one in Michelle Bowman). The statement seemed boiler plate with no explicit acknowledgement of election uncertainty or related issues and Powell delivered the expected message of ‘steady as she goes’ regarding the dots and…

The 47th President of the United States of America has been elected. Donald J Trump will assume office in January and to say US markets are thrilled is an understatement. In a surprise to most political pundits, it did not take multiple days to count the votes and determine a winner but instead the race was called at 5:30am after Trump swept the swing states that he had previously lost to President Biden in 2020. Main US indexes and treasury rates jumped on the news, with both the S&P 500 and N…

Election day is finally here in the states, the ballot storm has arrived. As we await results of our new President-In-Elect, which may take some time, hoping sooner rather than later, I strongly hope that we live up to the first word of our country….”UNITED” we should stand. Speaking of united equities soared in unison forming a sea of green, as it was a rather tame day across major averages. Interesting stat from our very own Ben Denney, on average election day over the last 10 years is up +90…

Oh, it’s going to be a week, isn’t it? You know so when the FOMC is taking a backseat on the list of market-moving events on the weekly itinerary. The market hasn’t deviated much over the last few weeks in its expectations, a 25bps cut largely factored in, a quite soft NFP on Friday pretty much confirming it. Much speculation remains over the election however, and a surprising poll out of Iowa has ever, EVER so slightly nudged VP Harris back into the ‘lead.’ That has caused a bit of tumult in t…

It almost looked as though the S&P500 saw a ghost today as the index wiped out all of October’s gains (+1.8% as of yesterday’s close, now -6 bps on the month). Or as one economist put it, “it turns out stocks can’t go up each day.” Heavy weights Microsoft and Meta dragged on indices due to their combined $4.5trn market cap, but they weren’t the only companies haunting investors as today’s overflow of earnings underwhelmed in aggregate (details below). On the economic front, we had some importan…

“Life…it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying.”

There’s a lot happening over the next seven trading days and that has the Street on edge. But while the various events all have something to monitor closely, the path for equities continues upward for now. Besides earnings, this week’s economic data is packed with employment insights bookended by the nonfarm payrolls Friday. JOLTS this morning fell below estimates (7.443mn versus 8mn) giving Treasuries a brief pop, as openings continue to show a move back towards pre-covid levels (today’s print…

The calm before the storm, with US Presidential Elections just a week away (arguably the last week of normalcy here in the States until the election dust settles), the busiest week of corporate earnings with 42% of the SPX reporting this week (5 of the 7 Magnificent), in conjunction with a handful of key economic data, there is not a moment of dullness on this side of the Atlantic, for better or worse. As we are nearly a third of the way through Q3’s reporting season, ~75% of corporate earnings…

Standing out from the crowd can be a good thing and a bad thing during earnings season and there was certainly more (!) in both categories today as earnings fed through at a ferocious pace. Much of the day was spent trying to decipher the noise, delineate between the risers and fallers, and highlight the macro movers and shakers. But once people came up for air, it was clear there was a split down the middle in terms of bullish and bearish EPS releases. Bulls were quick to highlight Tesla (TSLA…

A mid-week sell of evident today as investors took a step back, focusing on the elephant(s) in the room. With the US election a mere two weeks ago and an outcome that is far from certain investors are struggling for direction, and the macro backdrop is not doing much to help matters either as yields persistently grind higher and the VIX spiked above 20 today. Despite drinking from an earnings fire hose today the close deep in the red for major US indices didn’t feel particularly single stock dr…