PUT IN WORK (7/29/2024)

As of last week, the stock market has continued to take a breather. Although markets looked as if they’d be making their way higher, come Tuesday, they began their descent once more. Their downward trajectory continued until Friday when stocks turned around and started climbing again. While the S&P 500 (SPY) fell 0.8%, the Nasdaq (QQQ) fell a significantly greater 2.5%, showing the tech sector’s immediate decline.

Over the last two weeks, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq have fallen 3% and 7.3%, respectively, though the future still looks bright. Currently, futures across all indices are up over a percent, indicating that today’s market open could continue the positive movement we saw last Friday as investors try to regain some of those lost profits. In the grand scheme of the market, these large tech stocks are still up tremendously over the last several months, having made multiple large runs since the start of the year—this pullback was and is both inevitable and healthy.

In other news, earnings season is still in full swing. While some stocks, such as Google (GOOG) and Tesla (TSLA), didn’t do as good as Wall Street expected—though they did still beat general expectations—others, such as Spotify (SPOT) and Coca-Cola (KO), performed quite well. This week, even more significant companies will be reporting: Amazon (AMZN), AMD (AMD), Apple (AAPL), and Intel (INTC), to name a few. Furthermore, investors and analysts alike are anticipating good results. These earnings are being reported in the same week as the Fed meeting, which will occur this Tuesday and Wednesday. Investors still expect to hear some news about the state of rate cuts, with many believing that we’ll see our first one sometime within the next several months. Overall, the market appears generally healthy; it’s taken a nice breather, and we’re hopeful this will be good for its long-term performance.

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

PORTFOLIO UPDATE

Although the market at large took a significant hit last week, many small-cap stocks were actually on the rise. This has resulted in our portfolio ending primarily up, with most stocks either climbing higher by several percent or sitting neutral. We plan to hold all currently owned stocks for the foreseeable future. As always, thank you for reading, and happy investing.