Last week, the market was roughly flat, until we heard Fed Chairman Jerome Powell speak at Jackson Hole, implying that rate cuts were coming very soon, leading investors to believe that the Fed’s next interest rate decision would be a rate cut. This sent the markets up slightly, with the Dow, S&P, and Nasdaq being up between 1-1.35% on a week-over-week basis. However, the Russell skyrocketed upward, finding itself up 3.31% on the back of this incredible news. This is mainly due to the fact that small cap stocks are often the companies most affected by high interest rates.
Although last week was relatively quiet in terms of economic data releases, we did see some great real estate-related data come out. Existing home sales met expectations, coming in at 3.95 million for the month of July. Additionally, new home sales beat expectations, coming in at 739,000, compared to an expected 668,000. When you combine this with the anticipation of rate cuts coming down the pipeline, we may have a recipe for another boom in housing prices over the coming months or years.
This week, we’ve got a relatively busy week in terms of economic data releases. We kick things off on Tuesday with consumer confidence, followed by the 2nd revision of Q2 GDP and pending home sales on Thursday. We then cap off the week with personal income and spending, PCE, and the final consumer sentiment reading for the month of August. All of this information is going to be a great indicator of how the consumer is faring. Although many data points we’ve been seeing in earnings and economic data point to the consumer doing relatively well, you never know what you may find in these releases!
This week, earnings season continues, as some of the final large companies report their earnings, such as:
08/26 – PDD Holdings (PDD), Trip.com (TCOM)
08/27 – Bank of Montreal (BMO), Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS), SentinelOne (S)
08/28 – NVIDIA (NVDA), Salesforce (CRM), CrowdStrike Holdings (CRWD), HP Inc. (PHQ), Veeva Systems (VEEV), NetApp (NTAP)
08/29 – Dell Technologies (DELL), Marvell Technology (MRVL), Autodesk (ADSK), lululemon athletica (LULU), Dollar General (DG), Best Buy (BBY), MongoDB (MDB), Ulta Beauty (ULTA), Burlington Stores (BURL), Campbell Soup (CPB), Birkenstock (BIRK)
This week, everyone will be paying attention to the AI giant in the room, NVDA. The market rally that we’ve seen throughout this year has been fueled by AI, and investor sentiment around AI and NVDA is the poster child. There’s a good chance that we’ll see quite a bit of volatility in the market surrounding NVDA’s earnings release.
The market will also be keen to hear what companies like CRM and CRWD have to say, as both have had some struggles recently. Analysts will eagerly await to hear what CRM says about AI and their guidance for upcoming quarters. Likewise, analysts will be keen to hear what CRWD has to say about the recent outage and how they suspect this will impact their financials and growth rates moving forward.
Monitoring the market conditions this week.
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