PUT IN WORK (7/31/2023)

The stock market had a very volatile and unexpected week—you might even be able to describe it as a roller coaster. Nevertheless, indices ended up in the green, not by a small amount either. The Nasdaq (QQQ) ended up 2%, while the S&P 500 (SPY) ended up a solid 1%. Almost all of these positive gains came on Friday, after the market reacted negatively to the Fed’s most recent meeting, which took place last Tuesday and Wednesday.

Speaking of the Fed’s most recent meeting, the results were just about what investors expected. As we and many others have said, interest rates rose by 25-basis-points, and the door is open for another 25-point hike come their September meeting. Again, this is just about what we expected out of the Fed this time around. With that out of the way, investors are looking to company earnings for decision-making, and as of last week, we saw some big players up to bat.

Two companies worth noting are Alphabet (GOOG) and Meta (META), which saw great earnings that sent their stock price to heights we haven’t seen since early 2022. Only time will tell if these levels will hold, but the rapid growth and upward movement is still a joyous sight. Companies like Snapchat (SNAP) and Roku (ROKU) didn’t perform nearly as well, dropping several percent for the week due to earnings.

We have many more earnings coming up this week as well, starting with companies such as SoFi (SOFI) and AMD (AMD) before we get into some even bigger players such as Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN) in the latter half of the week. Earnings will likely drive the market for the foreseeable future, so we’re very interested to see how this week shapes up.

(Nasdaq ETF (QQQ) price from July 2022 - July 2023 — each candle is 1 week. Chart provided by tradingview.com.)

PORTFOLIO UPDATE

Our stocks didn’t perform as impressively as the market last week. Most of them sit relatively flat, falling on Thursday and struggling to make back as much as the indices did on Friday. One thing to note: Snapchat (SNAP) didn’t have great earnings and dropped approximately 14%. They’re currently trying to climb their way back up, but we’ve taken a heavy hit on them for now. We plan to hold all currently owned stocks for the foreseeable future. As always, thank you for reading, and happy investing.