The View from 5th Avenue

Oil was the prominent focus once again today, extending yesterday’s weakness amid ongoing supply concerns stemming from Sunday’s OPEC+ meeting. Unhelpfully, heavyweight BP also saw an S&P rating cut and thus, oil majors such as Conoco (COP -1.4%), Schlumberger (SLB -1.5%) and Halliburton (HAL -2.5%) took part in sector-wide abuse. Putting the more volatile yet ever-relevant commodity aside though, investors seem to be teetering on the state of the economy with both bulls and bears on shaky grou…

Trying to navigate the complicated world of financial markets is a fun endeavor as others become a millionaire many (hundreds of?) times over on the flip of an Uno card. To be fair, it’s an underrated game. The kitty was roaring again (but some purrs from the SEC may be coming…) but the broader market ended May with a bit of a whimper and the first trading day of June changed little. The issues monopolizing the mental market share remain the same (rates, inflation) and as such, the picture is…

Nothing like a rally into the close to get investors ready for the weekend. US indices traded modestly in the red for most of today’s session, but with just 20 minutes to spare the MSCI rebalance added some action. Indices reversed course to close higher with the Dow +151 bps, the S&P500 +80 bps, and the Nasdaq -1bp on elevated volumes. An interesting shake up was evident today with some month-end mean reversion that saw heavy underperformance in tech, momentum, and growth – the same factors th…

Markets flipped the usual script today as small caps outperformed the major indices (RTY was +1%), Nvidia fell almost 4%, and Consumer Discretionary and Real Estate topped the S&P sector leaderboard. The SPX and CCMP finished lower for multiple reasons – weakness in certain corners of the market, for one (see: software). Additionally, this morning’s economic data inflated investors’ concerns regarding the economy, giving treasuries a boost. Q1 GDP/PCE/Personal Consumption and April pending home…

Markets red today as the calendar ticks closer to month end. While the MSCI will be the volume crescendo at Friday’s close, participants are still adjusting their positions into the end of May. As of now, the broader indexes are sitting on nice monthly gains (SPX +4.6%, CCMP +8%, RTY +3.16%), but obviously the month is not finished yet! The pull today of those monthly adjustments kept a lid on the markets as the S&P 500 opened lower by 74bps, and the Nasdaq 82bps. They did rally slightly off th…

Regardless of which side of the Atlantic you are on, today’s wake up was tougher than usual, with Memorial Day and Bank Holiday in the rearview we are back to Fed speakers dictating intraday movements! Case and point Neel Kashkari with his morning comments around robust wage growth, labor markets, odds of rate hike being low but not off table while not penciling in more than two cuts for this year (phew that was a lot). Net/net higher for longer remains the constant. Aside from Fed comments, we…

The first long weekend of the summer (almost) is finally here and that means a lot of participants are not. And volumes reflected that (-21% versus the 20d)! But after yesterday’s PMI data spooked investors into taking profits (especially after the Fed minutes Wednesday), equities went back in the direction they have become accustomed to and closed higher. There was some economic data to watch for, and the final University of Michigan rose to 69.1 from the preliminary 67.7 reported two weeks ag…

Investors were forced to navigate a multitude of data points today – remarkable, given one stock was expected to carry all of equities. NVIDIA (NVDA +9%) spiked after reporting another blowout set of numbers and most of tech reacted in kind. But even before the white-hot PMI’s later in the morning, there was underperformance in non-tech names. And when PMIs rose to 54.4 (51.2 expected), a 25-month high (!), it fuelled a spike in yields and underscored some of the worries set in motion by yester…

We’ve all played the Bitcoin game, haven’t we? ‘If only I’d taken some of that bonus from years ago, and it didn’t even have to be a lot, I’d be worth millions!’ Well nobody laments that lost opportunity more than Laszlo Hanyecz. On this day 14 years ago, story has it Laszlo bought 2 large pizzas in Florida (b/c of course) for 10,000 BTC. At the time it was worth $41; today it would be $700mm. May 22nd will forever be known as Bitcoin Pizza day. Feel better about your own lack of investment? I…

What a beautiful day here on 5th avenue in New York City. For the past few weeks, it was like we were living in London, but the sun is shining, the temperature is an ideal 75 degrees with a slight breeze all helping give way to weak volumes across US markets. Main US indexes traded sideways for most of the session but that didn’t stop the S&P 500 and Nasdaq from making new all-time highs despite more stocks being down than up on the day. Tech stocks were in focus today with headlines stemming…