Stock Index

Global capital is flooding into US markets as many traders return from a long holiday weekend.

Roughly four months after the Christmas swoon in US stocks, sector rotation suggests the bull market is alive and well.

US stock markets stumbled out of the gate to start this week’s trade after a lack of progress on the US-China trade negotiation front this weekend and fresh concerns around Boeing’s prospects. Among the major US indices, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite is performing best...

Having conquered the November high with yesterday’s breakout, the Dow looks up to its record highs with little in the way of technical resistance.

With US treasury yields starting to turn lower, just as the S&P500 hesitate at critical highs, we take a look at the bigger picture to see if sentiment could be about to turn for the worst.

After two weeks of constructive trade talks on both sides of the Pacific, we suggested that traders were “expecting the increase in tariffs will be delayed…with some sort of agreement following in either late March or early April.” On Sunday night, President Trump confirmed that he would be delaying the tariff escalation and planning another summit between President Xi and himself (date TBD).

When yesterday’s dueling Democratic and Republican proposals to open the government both failed to garner nearly enough votes in the Senate, it assured that 800,000 government employees would go a whole month without receiving a paycheck. However, it’s often said that “the night is darkest just before the dawn,” and there are some signs that yesterday’s failed votes may serve as the catalyst for a true compromise to end the stalemate.

US stock markets were closed yesterday in remembrance of Dr. Martin Luther King, and given the headwinds the world economy faces, perhaps policymakers could benefit from his overriding message of inclusion and cooperation.

One of the first things that new traders to the FX markets learn is that many currencies are correlated with other markets. For instance, the close relationship between oil and the Canadian dollar or certain metals and the Australian dollar are intuitive given the importance of exporting those commodities for the Canadian and Australian economies.

The minutes from each Federal Reserve meeting are released three weeks after the meeting itself, meaning that they’re generally stale under the best of circumstances...

Buying Momentum Falters Asian markets pushed higher overnight, with the exception of the Shanghai Index, which was nursing losses following dismal Chinese industrial profits. Europe also started in the black, although European bourses were back in the red by midway through the European session.

The last few months have been hard on stock market bulls, to put it lightly...

Brexit developments continue to draw all the headlines, with my colleague Fawad Razaqzada characterizing today’s cabinet resignations as a disaster for PM May. While the updates from the UK continue to come in hot and heavy, we’re aware that some readers may be suffering from “Brexit fatigue”; thankfully, there are plenty of other market opportunities to highlight, including in major US stock indices.

After pausing briefly on this morning’s slightly softer-than-anticipated inflation data (see my colleague Fawad Razaqzada’s post, “Dollar extends but CPI miss not a game changer” for more), US stocks have resumed yesterday’s selling rout. As of writing, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is trading off by another 500+ points, with the S&P 500 falling by more than 2% as well.

Oh, how quickly the trading tables can turn!

On Monday, we flipped the calendar into a new week, month, and quarter, and beyond the weather getting cooler (at least for Northern Hemisphere readers!), that means that we’re on the verge of another quarterly earnings season for US stocks.

The weather isn’t the only thing taking a turn for the worse as summer winds to a close; the so-called FANG stocks (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google/Alphabet) that led the US stock market as a whole higher throughout the summer have also been backsliding.

It’s become gospel that technology is the most important sector of the US stock market; after all, tech stocks have the largest weighting in the S&P 500 (~26%), and the sector outperformed all others over the last year (+26%).

Following the relentless rally throughout last year, the price action in the major US stock market indices over the last six months has felt like purgatory.

After rallying over 5% in January and then seeing a 11% peak-to-trough drop in February, the S&P 500 has seen quiet price action over the last three months.

USD strength setback remains in progress except against the JPY.

As equity markets continued to rally sharply on Tuesday on the back of a strong start to corporate earnings season and decreased concerns over geopolitical risk, market fear as measured by the VIX volatility index continued to march lower.

After Nasdaq 100’s big drop on Friday, we are watching the broader S&P 500 index for any signs of weakness in US equity markets at the start of this new trading week. So far we haven’t seen anything too bearish. But with technology sector having been the leader, Friday’s sell-off is definitely a worrying sign for the stock markets. Any further sharp falls here could spook the wider equity markets and lead to a full-blown sell-off across the major global indices. This in turn could, for example, underpin safe haven assets like gold and silver and undermine risk-sensitive FX pairs such as the USD/JPY and USD/CHF.