The past week has been very green, with the Russell holding roughly flat, the Nasdaq up 0.48%, the S&P up 1.27%, and the Dow up 1.89%. This spotty green was mainly driven by growth in large and mega-cap companies over the past week. There was a tremendous amount of volatility in the tech sector, with small caps leading Nasdaq and Russell to lag the broader market. For instance, SHOP was down over 20% this week, and PLTR was down just over 15%! Although we’ve had quite a few weeks of earnings releases at this point, we still have another huge week ahead of us, so hold on tight!
Last week was relatively quiet in terms of economic data releases. However, the numbers that we did see were a bit of a mixed bag. Although consumer credit was considerably below expectations, coming in at $6.3 billion, compared to an expected reading of $14.8 billion, jobless claims ticked up higher than anticipated, and consumer sentiment was considerably lower than expected. In the first week of May, we saw 231,000 jobless claims, versus an expected reading of 214,000, and consumer sentiment came in at 67.4, compared to an expected reading of 76.0 and a previous reading of 77.2. This means that the consumer may be in a more difficult position than we had previously imagined.
This week, things heat up in terms of economic data releases. Things kick off on Tuesday with PPI and a speech from Fed Chair Jerome Powell, followed by CPI and the retail sales report on Wednesday. We then finish the week with some important housing metrics, like housing starts and building permits. The data we see this week should do a great job of informing us of how the economy is performing. Everyone will be paying particular attention to the inflation metrics, as they have been a bit squirrely over the past couple of months.
This week, we see some of the last large companies reporting their earnings for the first quarter, such as:
05/13 – Tencent Music Entertainment Group (TME), StoneCo (STNE)
05/14 – The Home Depot (HD), Alibaba (BABA), Sony Group (SONY), Alcon (ALC), Sea Limited (SE), On Holding (ONON)
05/15 – Cisco Systems (CSCO), Grab Holdings (GRAB), Dynatrace (DT), and Monday.com (MNDY)
05/16 – Walmart (WMT), Applied Materials (AMAT), Deere & Company (DE), Copart (CPRT), National Grid Transco (NGG), JD.com (JD), Ross Stores (ROST), Baidu (BIDU), Take-Two Interactive Software (TTWO)
This week, everyone will be paying particular attention to WMT and HD. WMT is going to give us a great idea of how the average consumer is faring amidst these confusing economic times. They’ll be able to inform us where people are spending their money when they are shopping, which will give us a great idea of the average consumer’s financial health. Additionally, HD will give us a great idea of whether or not people are doing small to mid-sized construction projects, which will also be very telling of how the economy is faring.
Monitoring the market conditions this week.
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