PUT IN WORK (5/13/2024)

The stock market displayed great strength last week as it climbed higher, with several major indices nearing their all-time peaks. The S&P 500 (SPY) ended up 1.5%, and the Nasdaq (QQQ) ended up 1.9%. Markets took the incredible momentum garnered from the previous couple of weeks and ran with it, and we're hoping to see that kind of positive attitude from investors carry into this week.

Investors are on the lookout for more quarterly earnings this week; they're also awaiting the release of important inflation data. April's consumer price index will come out Wednesday morning, with analysts expecting a 3.4% increase year-over-year. On the bright side, this means there is little to watch out for in the near term. The downside, however, is that since these are the only factors investors are looking at this week, they could sway investor opinion more heavily. We believe that inflation will come in light, an outcome that could push markets further in the near term. That news would set the market up for success for the rest of the week, and indices could even threaten to surpass previous all-time highs.

One interesting statistic relates to consumers' outlooks on inflation. It showed that consumers over the last year have gone from expecting inflation to climb 3.2% in April to 3.5%, an inherently more pessimistic outlook. Interestingly enough, according to Mark Hacket, Nationwide's chief of investment research, consumers on a broad scale are "more discerning about where they spend money." He then cites reports from McDonalds (MCD), Starbucks (SBUX), and Mondelez (MDLZ), with each company claiming in their own way that customers are growing more and more concerned with the value they're receiving relative to the amount they're spending.

In other news, we will see many more earnings reports this week. Some companies set to report are Cisco (CSCO), Walmart (WMT), Home Depot (HD), and Sony (SONY). The next Fed meeting won't occur this month but will occur on June 11th and 12th.

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

PORTFOLIO UPDATE

Our portfolio could have done better relative to the market at large. While some stocks inched upward, and one stock, SoundHound (SOUN), rose 30%, the majority of our stocks actually crawled downward or remained flat. We're hoping to see this turnaround soon. We plan to hold all currently owned stocks for the foreseeable future. As always, thank you for reading, and happy investing.