Market Briefing For Thursday June 6
Bull-bear squabbles persist - with extended meg-cap activity, also moribund smaller-cap action, as most aspects measuring markets essentially remain in a 'pending' mode for the most part.
It's not just ahead of Apple's WWDC (that is part of it), but an interesting fairly mild upside consolidation for early June in the broad market, with record Indexes based on the 3 trillion-dollar stocks (of course that's Apple (AAPL), Nvidia (NVDA) (which just overtook Apple's cap) and Microsoft (MSFT).
Some believe the risk/reward is for higher long end US rates from a monetary policy, fiscal policy, supply/demand and term premium perspective, but I'm not seeing it that way (Goldman Sachs does see that prospect) given economic & oil slippage, and the edge taken off the inflationary pace, albeit not more. I'll note again that a Goldman trading desk has the opposite view of strategists...
Still, I don't see much potential for now, barring improved breadth, and that's a function of contracts, business models, and results . . . much of which isn't yet clear for so many tech and other stocks, including speculative AI plays. Just a few show revenue evidenced (including little SoundHound (SOUN)), while other have an impressive pipeline of projects, but aren't sufficiently forthcoming about the prospects, and don't even explain the new (capable) Board Members (here it is BigBear.ai (BBAI) that really has explosive upside potential 'if' things mesh well).
Then you have bigger-cap companies like Intel and even our AMD, which tell investors of their own AI processor timelines, but presuming supply available from Nvidia, one ponders whether it's price-point or performance driving what they say will be demand for their variations of souped-up processor chips.
Market X-ray:
In a sense 'timelines' is what this is about. Everyone knows it is a time of chip transition and beyond evolution to the next stage of computing. Some of that has started, much is still moribund or simply holding its 'breadth' pending more data to gauge reality versus hype.
More upside tomorrow, barring exogenous shocks and regardless of all efforts to blunt Nvidia, at least until after we see post-split action. As to macro issues of course this Country has a spending problem (not a taxing issue, as old Rick Santelli noted on CNBC..part of it: conflicting policies of current politics versus pressure for growth). Moderating inflation gives us hints, but it's insufficient so far. Lower rates are likely in this Election year, but I see the other argument from a different perspective and that increases risks for 'after' the Election.
Wobbles and lower yields helping the Indexes a bit.. tomorrow is 'record date' for the Nividia split, but aside that it's an uneven take as to market action. So of course, the majority perceive a split as favorable (so it is) even as of course market cap doesn't change, but the perception of value will have appeal.
Maybe the most amusing story is 'Texas' going for a 'stock exchange', but with no listings as such, that project will be challenging. I would argue that Florida, at this point has far more institutional presence (start with Citadel) and built for this kind of industry. However, Florida has significantly more disaster risk than virtually any of the new wealth (or old money escaping New York) recognizes.
The long-term themes are not clear for this market, short-term they sure are, which is why I've urged 'not' shorting the mega-caps and not fighting this too much. There is a bullish alternative to this 'broad neutrality masked by S&P (SPX) at highs led by mega-caps', and that's if the 'average stocks' play catch-up.
There is also downdraft risk, but it is primarily in the mega-caps 'if' anything of an horrific nature occurs. Just look at the Russell (IWM), it's still just basically flat for the year and that reflects the narrow but impressive leadership, while the US economy is actually slowing down, with little ability to crash an already heavily repressed group of stocks, and actually the big-cap risk grows if this rockets in a parabolic way... which so far is only occurring in that handful of stocks.
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