-- Gold prices steadied in Asian trade on Thursday, recouping some recent losses as increased volatility in risk-driven markets, particularly stocks, kept safe havens relatively well-bid.
Major market averages (^DJI, ^IXIC, ^GSPC) move into positive territory at Thursday's open, the Nasdaq Composite seeing early gains as high as 1.4% after hopeful initial jobless claims data reported this morning. The Morning Brief's Brad Smith and Seana Smith report market moves after the opening bell, while Jared Blikre keeps a close watch on the action in Treasury yields (^TYX, ^TNX, ^FVX), the volatility index (^VIX), and the consumer discretionary (XLY) and consumer staples (XLP) sectors. For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Morning Brief. This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.
Big Tech stocks are in positive territory following sell-off woes, now pushing the market indexes (^DJI, ^IXIC, ^GSPC) higher in a slow recovery effort. In a note, Barclays Head of US Equity Strategy Venu Krishna wrote that tech leaders are in "the penalty box" at this time. Krishna joins the Catalyst team in-studio to talk about the refocus on AI monetization while tech stocks are trading increasingly higher than their earnings. "If you look at Meta (META), they posted very good numbers on digital ads. If you look at Amazon (AMZN), they posted very good numbers on their AWS side. And so if you look at individual names, they are checking the box," Krishna tells Yahoo Finance. "But clearly as the focus changes on onto the monetization of AI, from here on you don't want to pay very high multiples and you want to see actually the monetization showing up in earnings. And clearly this is a secular trend..." Krishna goes on to give his year-end forecast for the S&P 500 (^GSPC) and communicate how he sees the rest of the market (^DJI, ^IXIC) reacting to third quarter earnings forecasts. For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Catalysts. This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.
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-- Gold prices rose slightly in Asian trade on Wednesday after falling sharply in the prior session as the dollar steadied from recent losses, with focus remaining on a potential U.S. recession and lower interest rates.
The major indexes (^DJI,^GSPC, ^IXIC) are bouncing back after a three-day sell-off triggered by a weaker-than-expected jobs report in July. As investors continue to be wary of a recession, Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Slok joins Catalysts to discuss the market reaction and break down why tech, in particular, is seeing a massive sell-off. Slok notes that despite the weak labor report, there's not much other evidence that points to a recession: "Daily data for how many people fly on airplanes as of last Friday is still strong. Daily data from OpenTable for how many people go to restaurants is still strong. Weekly data for retail sales from Redbook is also still strong. Hotel occupancy rates, the weekly data also still strong." He reiterates Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's emphasis on the totality of the data, and adds, "the market is overreacting to just one data point." He believes that the tech sell-off is being driven by two factors. The first is because "valuations got so stretched and earnings expectations were simply inconsistent with where valuations were." Therefore, when some of the Magnificent Seven tech names missed expectations, investors reassessed their positions. The second boils down to the carry trade unwinding: "You've seen a reversal of a lot of trades where essentially investors were borrowing in yen. Remember, in yen, interest rates up until literally two weeks ago were zero. Now they went up to 25 basis points... dollar-yen has moved from 161 down to 144. That means that if I borrowed in yen, now I need to pay back in yen. If yen is more expensive, that means that I need to pay back more." Note: Apollo Global Management is Yahoo's parent company. For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Catalysts. This post was written by Melanie Riehl
Stocks remained under heavy selling pressure at the start of the week as recession worries continued to dominate global sentiment. A short squeeze in the VIX further weighed on the broader stock market, with the S&P 500 falling by 3.00%.
Despite a global market sell-off in Monday's trading session, Fundstrat Global Advisors managing director and global head of technical strategy Mark Newton believes there are still healthy areas of the market. He joins Market Domination to discuss some of the investment opportunities overlooked during the day's market pullback. Newton points to the XLB healthcare sector ETF (XLB) as one opportunity for investors, as it has steadily grown in 2024 and hit record highs despite an ongoing sell-off since mid-July. He also highlights that equal-weighted industrials and financial ETFs from Invesco — (RSPN) and (RSPF) — both hit new all-time highs last week. He notes that these areas of the market are being "disguised" and "camouflaged" by the "Big Tech wreck." "Investors have been overexposed, have huge concentration in technology. So a big sell-off like that in an area which is a major focus certainly hurts," Newton adds. "But I would say that honestly, for those that diversify, there are plenty of parts of the market that are still working well. And now with a big breakdown on the dollar, that eventually is going to start to aid emerging markets when we can see a little bit of stabilization to this." Despite bitcoin (BTC-USD) having its worst week since November 2022, Newton argues that the movement is "really just a drop in the bucket" : "I don't see much more deterioration beyond really the mid to high 40s. And I think we will bottom and we can pull out of this. But it is going to be important for the broader risk asset space to stabilize. It's very unusual and unlikely to see bitcoin simply surge back to new highs if the rest of the world is falling apart. So we need to really see some effort and dollar-yen holding to see rates go down a little bit less severely." For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Market Domination. This post was written by Melanie Riehl
-- Gold prices fell from near record highs in Asian trade on Tuesday as a rebound in stock markets sapped some demand for safe havens, although fragile sentiment still kept the yellow metal relatively upbeat.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) sank by an astounding 1,033 points in Monday's market sell-off, led by the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite's (^IXIC) own 3.43% decline. Yahoo Finance markets reporter Josh Schafer explains the perfect storm of market conditions that led to broad-based selling and heightened volatility (^VIX), including July's disappointing jobs figures and the rotation out of Big Tech names. For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Asking for a Trend. This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.