PUT IN WORK (8/7/2023)

The stock market has had a rough week, arguably its first actual loss since March. We've frequently seen the stock market fall throughout the year, only to rebound in the same week, but not this time. Stocks fell somewhat hard, with the S&P 500 (SPY) seeing a 2.3% loss and the Nasdaq (QQQ) seeing an equally heavy loss of 3%. What might have caused this sudden drop, you might ask? We can attribute that to the rising treasury yield and the United State's debt rating downgrade on August 1st. From Tuesday to Thursday last week, 3-, 10-, and 30-year securities saw sales totaling $103 billion because these low-risk investments are simply growing out of favor, hence the rising treasury yield.

All of these factors brought into question just how confident we are in our economy's ability to recover without a recession, and truthfully, we're not too worried. We saw a near-perfect July jobs report last Friday that helped cement the idea that we only have one (if any) more hike in store for this year. Moreover, Investors saw the 10-year treasury yield fall, evidently correcting itself rather quickly. Despite this good news, stocks still managed to dive toward the end of the week, likely due to some chart technicals.

As we head into this week, we're interested to see how investors react to events as they unfold. We still have many earnings to look forward to. Amazon (AMZN) and Apple (AAPL) reported last week, with mixed results. While Amazon impressed investors and climbed 10 percent on the day of, Apple seemingly couldn't fly high enough and thus dropped 5 percent despite decent earnings. Overall, we feel confident going into the future and are excited to see what the market has in store for us. Keep an eye out for opportunities as they arise.

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

PORTFOLIO UPDATE

Unfortunately, as the market did, many of our stocks took a hit over this last week. Our portfolio has some earnings coming up in the form of Roblox (RBLX) on Wednesday and Rigetti (RGTI) on Thursday. We also regret to inform our readers that one of our stocks, AppHarvest (APPH), has filed for bankruptcy and has thus been taken off the market. We believed in the company's vision heavily. Still, unfortunately, this vision couldn't be seen to its completion due to cost and the company's inability to grow its foundation in the current climate. As their market asset has been frozen, we've removed AppHarvest from our portfolio.

We're both excited and hopeful about the future. We plan to hold all currently owned stocks into the foreseeable future. As always, thank you for reading, and happy investing.