What Happened Last Week
- Earnings Strength: Strong tech earnings powered the S&P 500 and NASDAQ 100 to new all-time highs.
- Hawkish Fed: The Fed cut 25 basis points (bp), as expected, but its commentary suggested a December cut is far from a done deal.
- Trump-Xi Summit: The leaders failed to achieve a grand bargain, but the meeting saw trade tensions ease further.
What We’re Watching This Week
- Earnings: Earnings will begin to taper off, but reports from some retail favorites this week will act as a good barometer of retail investor sentiment.
- Politics: Several state and local elections will serve as an early read on next year’s midterms, while investors look to D.C. for signs of when the shutdown will end.
- Debt Issuance and Deals: The market will continue to weigh new issuance from mega-cap tech companies and a flurry of corporate deal activity.
Investment Management Team’s Views
After the biggest week of the quarter for market catalysts, the mega-cap tech giants once again helped the S&P 500 reach new highs. The NASDAQ 100 rose 2% last week on very strong reports from Amazon and Alphabet. The NASDAQ 100 gained 4.8% for October, its seventh straight positive month. Meanwhile, the rest of the market’s participation in the rally has been weak. Since the end of the first quarter, the average S&P 500 stock has gained less than 10% while the NASDAQ 100 is up ~35%. Small caps, dividend stocks, and defensives traded poorly last week, while a rally in the dollar, driven by Fed Chair Powell’s hawkish commentary, dampened international returns. Activity in the derivatives market over the past few weeks suggests that investors are preparing to chase tech stocks higher into year-end.
Macro developments were mixed beyond last week’s earnings bonanza. The meeting between Presidents Trump and Xi pointed to continued progress on trade and the overall relationship, but failed to ignite additional optimism that lifted the rest of the market. Chinese equities also saw some “sell the news” activity last week in another sign of how little trade risk is priced into markets currently. Last week’s Fed meeting did more to shake things up, however. Their 25 bp rate cut was as expected, but hawkish dissent and surprisingly blunt comments from Chair Powell about the committee’s division threw doubt on the extent and pace of additional cuts. Higher yields, led by the policy-sensitive front end of the curve, drove the dollar to its highest level since July and likely weighed on small-caps and other interest rate-sensitive parts of the market.
Week four of earnings season is considerably lighter than the last two, with only 10% of the S&P 500 set to report. However, there are a few AI-relevant names and several retail darlings giving updates. Reactions to those prints will help gauge sentiment among retail investors into the end of the year. Looking further ahead, the density of reports is set to continue to fall, and the next major event in the earnings space will be Nvidia’s report on November 19th. Beyond earnings, Election Day on Tuesday will bring the first clues for how next year’s midterm elections may shake out, with several high-profile state and local races concluding. There has also been a flurry of debt issuance and merger activity over the last week, and we will be watching how the market absorbs this debt and these deals.