The stock market rally continued to show strength into Friday moving decisively higher on the week.

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Big tech and many other sectors shrugged off a post-Fed pullback plus some earlier in the week, bad earnings and poor guidance from Wal-Mart, Meta, and Qualcomm to mention a few.

With Amazon, Apple, Microsoft all doing “better than feared”, even the “R” word could not stop the train in the indices, junk bonds and most sectors.

Apple, considered a bellwether, saw shares gain thanks to strong iPhone sales, mainly in India.  Consequently, technology investors should continue to monitor Apple for further signs of strength or weakness in technology and consumer demand.

Amazon’s stock also rose. The e-commerce giant exceeded sales projections. Sales increased 7%

Both stocks (AMZN and AAPL) eased concerns about the technology sector.

Furthermore, First Solar (FSLR) shares gained another 12% on top of the 15% Thursday on both an outperformance of the EPS and sales but also because of the potential progress made by Congress on legislation that includes solar and green-energy subsidies. The bill has a long way to go however to become reality.

With all this good news, what might we expect from here?

Not everything is coming up roses in the consumer sector as reflected by Granny Retail (XRT).

Some companies did way worse than expected. Intel (INTC), META (FB), and Roku (ROKU) were noteworthy with deep declines. All dropped in price precipitously due to low demand, poor advertising sales and falling revenues.

And Granny Retail is doing ok, but not really buying the euphoria, at least not yet.

Looking back at the chart of AAPL, we an see that 170-175 is huge resistance. And now that the price cleared 158, that level has to hold up.

In XRT, given the rise of both AAPL and AMZN, the price action is more meh than heck yeah! The XRT price has cleared back over the 50-DMA. The momentum shown by our real motion indicator has improved to a degree. XRT still underperforms the benchmark.

Friday, consumer sentiment showed some improvement. Nonetheless, we need to see more from our consumers.

As we head into this coming week, we must continue to watch three key indicators:

1. XRT-Recession, stagflation, whatever you wish to call the current economic status, consumers must remain cheerful in the face of a 40-year high in the PCE. Inflation has taken a breather but has not necessarily peaked. How many rallies in growth stocks have quickly petered out when investors realize that the “inside” sectors of the market are more pessimistic.
2. The long bonds TLT-a gauge for how the market perceives the FED-not hawkish enough looking here as yields have fallen. If the FED does not get more aggressive, the market rally can continue BUT-inflation will go nuts. The housing market now softer-any drop in yields that sustains will bring back homebuyers. With home prices still very high, new buyers can push related commodity prices like wood, steel, and copper to a new leg up. On the flipside, if Powell and crew get more aggressive, the big tech rally will reverse very quickly.
3. Oil-Spot Brent reached nearly $112 a barrel with very little fanfare. Should oil rally more from here, that will not only light a fire under the rest of the commodities but could also negatively impact the consumers and the big tech companies as their costs will continue to rise. Not to mention the FED is watching as part of their data points.

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