The View from 5th Avenue

US Markets meandered aimlessly in typical Monday fashion as midday confusion over night vs day seemed to eclipse market activity as data shows this was the lightest trading day of 2024. We traded on either side of the breakeven line throughout the day before finally closing flattish as we prepare for another macro-abundant week with March CPI on Wednesday plus March FOMC Minutes and PPI to follow on Thursday before banks earnings kick things off for Q2 results on Friday. As a precursor, we go…

TGINFPF (Thank God It’s NFP Friday). The change in NFPs for March blew past all estimates this morning, coming in at 303k vs 214k expected and well above the recent monthly average of around 250k while average hourly earnings nudged lower YoY. But interestingly, the data hasn’t done much to upset the apple cart with US equities finishing comfortably in the green. However, the report did shake things up for yields across the curve with the 10-year closing +200bps. The overarching theme for the w…

Make a note don’t invite a hawkish Fed official to a party. The S&P 500 was cruising along the whole day, possibly on its way to another all-time high before multiple headlines broke and US markets erased all earlier gains and then some. While there were a half of dozen Fed speakers today, Kashkari comments stole headlines by casting doubt on rate cuts for 2024. Despite “jotting down two rate cuts this year” in his March dot plot, he stated that the current sticky inflation data “would make me…

Markets continue adjust to the not new higher for longer rate regime that is currently in place via the Fed. Since the last meeting, the chorus of Fed speakers have mentioned their data dependency (which remains economy positive), while their long-term plans of cutting rates this year remains on track. Powell had the podium today and maintained the same wait and see approach, and therefore no change. CME futures continue to see a 58% chance of a cut in June, but that seemingly has been moving w…

With all hands-on deck post the extended Easter holiday (for some – ahem), today was far from sweet, in contrast to what’s been an ongoing sugar rush for equities the first quarter of the year. In a perfect case of damned if you do / damned if you don’t, a 2nd day of positive economic data caused both stocks and bonds to fall, the prospect of higher for longer growing ever more possible with each passing day. The question remains whether that’s such a bad thing, corporate earnings and by exten…

Happy Easter Monday! With most major European markets closed today, and within APAC Australia/New Zealand/Hong Kong closed last night, it left the US was left with rather light trading conditions. Given it is the start of a new month, we had a handful of data this morning, some of which sent us into the red. Today’s PMI survey continued to show good data trends whilst ISM came in above expectations resulting in the SPX and CCMP to come off session highs. While glancing at WIRP estimates intrada…

As we closed the books on another week, month and quarter, equities continued their journey higher, although today was subject to a bit of rangebound price action, suppressed volumes, and rotation dynamics. Despite the stutter step, the familiar narrative remains— the path of least resistance is higher thanks to a marked improvement in breadth, strong fundamentals (demonstrated by solid earnings reports), seemingly ever-lasting AI optimism, and of course the perpetual expectations for a rate…

The S&P opened higher this morning and traded mostly sideways for the session before rallying and closing at another all-time high. It was another day of gains for main US indexes despite volumes being lower for the 4th day in a row (S&P volume -11% vs 20 AVAT), rebounding after yesterday’s late session fade. The muted volumes did not affect S&P 500 breadth though, out of the 503 members in the S&P 500, 90% of them finished positive on the day. What was surprising was an underperformance from s…

Markets have been strolling along at quite the leisurely pace for a week that marks both month and quarter-end where main US indices are knocking on the door of double-digit gains with 75% of the year still yet to unfold. Equities were walking on the sunny side of the street up until 30mins to go, when they suddenly crossed the street and went from gains to losses in swift step. With no obvious catalyst for the change in tune, lighter volumes and a closing sell imbalance seemed to do be the m…

Indices performance today looked a bit like my March Madness bracket: red. I’m not sure a bit of profit taking on the back of last week’s strong performance in equities is comparable to my abysmal record in our office pool, but I digress. We are broadly in ‘wait and see’ mode ahead of PCE Friday with volumes notably down both overseas and on the home front. The sleepier start to the week was reflected in sector movements as well, Autos and Energy led the way though no single sector had a move o…