The View From Fifth Avenue

While the UK and Japan surprised investors and slipped into recession territory today, the US market laced up its boots a climbed higher despite an underwhelming performance from the Technology and Software sectors. The Russel 2000 took home first place today thanks to a rebound performance from US banks after the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (say that three times fast) terminated the 2016 sales practices Consent Order against Wells Fargo (+7.2%). Economic data picked back up today…

“You don’t love because, you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults.”

The markets infatuation with inflation continues and today’s much anticipated CPI print left investors questioning once again their outlook on the Fed rate path. Just a couple months ago, the Street had priced in multiple cuts in 2024 even as Powell and company held their higher for longer stance. The Fed kept that theme at their January 31st meeting, and today’s CPI print played into the patience. While the y/y dropped to 3.1% in January from 3.9%, it was higher than estimates of 2.9% as shelt…

A quiet day in US markets today as we celebrate the first-ever female to secure a SuperBowl victory in NFL history 😉… With today’s main events more focused around the recapping of last night- football related and otherwise- both news and action alike were sparce in Monday trading. Asian markets were closed for the most part in observation of the Lunar New Year where celebrations around the Year of the Dragon left little in the way of catalysts overnight. Fed member Bowman attempted to shake…

Up, up, and away we go… an early revise lower for CPI MoM spurred equities higher as the S&P opened above 5000 and closed at yet another all-time high. Earnings drove the bus this week with a number of outsized single stock moves and c80% of companies reporting a surprise beat according to Bloomberg. Consolidation is the name of the game as the Fab4 is the new M7, tearing past peers and driving indices from bottom left to top right. Amazon took the cake today, closing at a 52-week high and only…

It had to be done, and for a brief second in the final seconds, the S&P 500 crossed the 5000 mark. The index ultimately closed at 4997.91 a few seconds later, but 5000 has been breached. All three major indexes closed in the green today as momentum continues to the upside. Outperformance shifted away from the Mag7 and towards the Russell 2000, which added 1.5% today, and closing above its 50-day moving average (1951). News flow continues to focus on earnings since the economic calendar is light…

Take me to church

T’was the night of the Grammy’s and all was calm, as long as you didn’t have the prior program on…the one-eyed network known as C B S, interviewed our fed chair and deprived us of good rest……I rhyme that to point out where today’s woes began, not the Grammy’s but the 60minutes interview, when the Fed’s Jerome Powell gave pushback towards a March rate cut during the weekly program. As witnessed in today’s action, Powell’s commentary did not offer a bolstering narrative towards a March cut as US…

In a week with a laundry list of micro and macro data points, it was Meta that stole the show. Shares of the tech behemoth rose 20.3% today in the biggest one-day gain of market value ($197bn) by any company on the back of its blockbuster earnings report (Happy Friday Zuckerberg!). Amazon lent a hand in today’s rally as well after an early wobble due to a blowout NFP number (353k v 185k surveyed). Yields jumped on the news (you say surprise, yields say how high). It’s worth grabbing a shovel an…

The stars aligned in all facets for markets today as dovish economic data, a dovish pivot from the BoE, a handful of decent earnings and high hopes for mega cap tech earnings, as well as speculation of a ceasefire in Gaza, turned Wednesday’s frown upside down. The S&P, RTY and CCMP all spiked around 130bps, while Oil and the DXY fell (the former fell 3.5% below $79). The 10yr dropped small – about 5bps. In terms of the data, weekly claims of 224k were 10k above expectations and US Unit Labor C…