PUT IN WORK (2/12/2024)

To some people’s surprise, the stock market has continued its positive push to even greater heights. Last week, investors saw the Nasdaq (QQQ) and S&P 500 (SPY) rise by a whopping 1.9% and 1.5%, respectively. Although Monday saw markets down, investors pushed it higher and higher throughout the week, resulting in another new high for several of the market’s larger indices. The Russell 2000 (RUT) also pushed higher, climbing nearly 2.5%.

In other news, well, it’s the same as it has been for the last several weeks, so we won’t bore you with too many repeated details. Many stocks reported great earnings in the previous week: Disney (DIS), Spotify (SPOT), Cloudflare (NET), CVS (CVS), Palantir (PLTR), and several others. While that is the case, others missed the mark, such as PayPal (PYPL), Snapchat (SNAP), and Take-Two Interactive (TTWO).

Today, a survey revealing consumer expectations will be released, but tomorrow, we may see some serious changes in the market. Tomorrow, Tuesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will reveal January’s consumer price index, and on Thursday, the Census Bureau will report retail sales information for January. These are known to shake up the market, and seeing as indices are flying so high as of right now, this time could be no different. Futures are currently down approximately 0.1%, indicating that there may be some uncertainty on the horizon. Many investors are anticipating core inflation to rise slightly to 0.3%, noting that if expectations are not met, it could spell the end of the market’s current run. The Fed wants to be confident that inflation is slowing at their desired target of 2% before they start rate cuts, and if the fight against inflation is going even slightly worse than expected, that could push cuts back another couple of months at the least.

On top of all that, we’re still in the midst of earnings season. This week will see companies such as Arista (ANET), Shopify (SHOP), Robinhood (HOOD), Fastly (FSLY), Roku (ROKU), and Coca-Cola (KO) reporting. Although these companies aren’t necessarily the behemoths that Disney (DIS), Amazon (AMZN), and Apple (AAPL) are, they’re sure to shake up the market depending on overall performance. We’re excited to see how things shape up.

(Nasdaq ETF (QQQ) price from February 2023 - 2024 — each candle is 1 week. Chart provided by tradingview.com.)

PORTFOLIO UPDATE

Most of our stocks moved up along with the market, though there were a few standouts both in the favorable and unfavorable sense. While Roblox (RBLX) had great earnings and climbed nearly 10%, Snapchat (SNAP), another stock in our portfolio, was crushed by earnings, dropping almost 31% in just one day. We’ll hold it for now, but we’ll also keep a close eye on it. We plan to hold all currently owned stocks for the foreseeable future. As always, thank you for reading, and happy investing.