Stock Market Today: April 1st - 5th, 2024

Morning Lineup - 4/3/24 - And Then There Were Six
Wed, Apr 3, 2024

Stock futures are modestly lower this morning which would set the market up for its third straight day of declines. The just released ADP Payrolls report for March came in higher than expected (184K vs 150K), and futures experienced a modest bounce in the initial reaction. Still on deck, we have the S&P and ISM PMI indices for the Services sector, and both are expected to show a modest uptick relative to February.

After the close last Wednesday, the S&P 500 and all eleven sector ETFs were trading at overbought levels. The S&P 500 was at a record high, and the long-awaited broadening appeared to be playing out. Except for Real Estate, every sector was up YTD. Besides that, not only was every sector back above their respective 50-day moving averages, but they were also all trading at overbought levels (one or more standard deviation above their 50-day moving averages).



Three trading days later, we’ve seen some deterioration in the market. The S&P 500 still closed at overbought levels yesterday, but nearly half of all sectors have moved out of that range, including Real Estate, which is back below its 50-day moving average, and Health Care, which is barely hanging on to that level. For both sectors, the selloffs have had specific catalysts. In Health Care, it was Monday’s announcement from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that 2025 payment rates for Medicare Advantage plans would effectively be equal to a 0.16% decline relative to this year. The decline in Real Estate stems from concerns over “higher for longer” interest rates threatening the ability of property owners to refinance loans at feasible rates. Just this morning, the FT reported that 2023 cash flows at a $60 bln property fund operated by Blackstone (BX) weren’t enough to cover its annual dividend payments.

To be sure, the declines of the last two trading days are peanuts in the grand scheme of things. The S&P 500 is down less than 1% from its record closing high last Thursday, and most sectors are still overbought. In a bull market, these are exactly the types of rotational moves you would expect to see, and even more short-term weakness in the low to mid-single-digit percentage range shouldn’t be a surprise. The timing is also good. The last thing you would want to see heading into earnings season is a market trading at overbought or extreme overbought levels and setting the bar unrealistically high.

 

Here is a final look at today's market and futures maps, as well as how each sector performed individually at the close on Wednesday, April 3rd, 2024.

 

Top of the morning StonkForumers! Happy Thursday to all of you and welcome to the new trading day and a frrrrrrrrrrrresh start. Here is a quick check on those futures as we are under an hour into the US cash market open.

GLTA on this Thursday, April the 4th, 2024!

 

Morning Lineup - 4/4/24 - Did Anything Good Come Out of the Eighties?
Thu, Apr 4, 2024

While the S&P 500, Nasdaq, and Russell 2000 all managed to post gains yesterday, the DJIA closed lower for its third day in a row. That streak may come to an end today, though, as futures are higher across the board. The only notable data point of the morning was jobless claims. Initial claims came in higher than expected (221K vs 214K) and hit the highest level since late January while continuing claims fell back below 1.8 million versus forecasts for a reading just above that level (1.791 mln vs 1.810 mln). Besides the employment data ahead of tomorrow’s jobs report, there are also a ton of Fed speakers on the calendar today, so by the end of the day we should have a much better idea of the prospects of a June rate cut, which currently stands at just about a coin flip.

Happy Birthday to the “Blue Screen of Death”. The world’s largest company, Microsoft (MSFT), turns 49 years old today as it was founded on this day in 1975 in Albuquerque, NM by Paul Allen and Bill Gates. Of the six US publicly traded companies with trillion-dollar market caps, MSFT is the oldest followed by Apple (AAPL) which was founded nearly two years to the day later. The chart below of the Nasdaq shows the dates that each member of the trillion-dollar club was founded.

It’s interesting to note that not even one of the largest US companies is 50 years old. The youngest of the six is Meta Platforms (META), but it won’t be legal to toast its membership for another ten months as it only turned twenty two months ago. People will tell you that while the 1980s were a lot of fun, not much good came out of them, and that’s also the case with the largest companies. After AAPL was founded in 1976, there was a 17-year lull before the next member, Nvidia (NVDA), was founded in 1993. Just over a year after that, Amazon.com (AMZN) was founded in 1994. That was the same year that Katie Couric, Bryant Gumble, and Elizabeth Vargas asked each other, “What is internet?”. Look who’s laughing now!

 

Here is a final look at today's market and futures maps, as well as how each sector performed individually at the close on Thursday, April 4th, 2024.

 

here is a quick preview of next week's notable earnings releases courtesy of reddit's wallstreetbets:

have yourself a terrific weekend ahead guys!

 

Top of the morning StonkForumers! Happy Friday to all of you and welcome to the final trading day of the week and a frrrrrrrrrrrresh start. Here is a quick check on those futures as we are under an hour into the US cash market open.

GLTA on this Friday, April the 5th, 2024!

 

Morning Lineup - 4/5/24 - And the Number Is...
Fri, Apr 5, 2024

Futures have been attempting to recover from yesterday afternoon's sell-off. International indices are sharply lower as they were closed before the selling got underway here. Where the market finishes today will hinge in large part on the March employment report which just hit the tape. Non-farm payrolls came in stronger than expected at 303K versus forecasts for an increase of 214K. The Unemployment Rate was right in line with forecasts at 3.8% as was average hourly earnings which increased 4.1%. The average workweek was modestly longer than expected at 34.4 hours vs. forecasts for 34.3. In reaction to the report, equity futures sold off a bit, and yields increased with the 10-year just under 4.4%.

In yesterday’s Closer, we provided a detailed discussion of Thursday’s reversal in the Nasdaq including its potential drivers (When you boil it down can anyone ever really definitively tell you what the actual cause of any market move is?). This morning, we wanted to take a wider-angle view and look at every time since 1989 (as far back as we have intraday Nasdaq data available) that the Nasdaq experienced a similar reversal to yesterday.

Since 1989, there have been 122 prior days where the Nasdaq was up 1% intraday and finished the day down over 1%. As mentioned last night, many of these days have tended to occur during bear markets. After all, it’s more common for rallies to run out of steam during bear markets than bull markets. When you don’t tend to see these types of reversals is during a bull market when the Nasdaq is right near 52-week highs.

There have now been just ten days since 1989 when the Nasdaq was up 1% intraday and finished the day down 1%. As shown in the chart below, two of those days were in early 1999, a year before the peak of the dot-com bubble. Another two occurred in early 2020, including one on 3/7/00, just three days before the Nasdaq’s intraday peak of that era. The next two occurrences were in 2003 as the market was coming out of the bear market from the internet bubble. After those two days, there were no other reversals of a similar magnitude for seventeen years (7/13/2020 and 11/9/2020), and before yesterday, the most recent occurrence was less than a month ago on March 8th. Is it just us, or does anyone else find it weird that these reversals tended to come in pairs? In every year where there was a reversal, there was always another and not a single more.