Yahoo Finance Wall Street Set to Post Fifth Winning Month Amid Volatility
U.S. stock markets saw a pullback on Monday to start a holiday-shortened week. However, Wall Street is likely to record the fifth consecutive winning month despite volatility. The AI-driven rally of the last 15 months is showing no sign of losing pace.
The AI-space is yet to unfold in the United States and international markets. Smart devices need computing and learning capabilities to perform face detection, image recognition and video analytics capabilities. These require high processing power, speed and memory, low power consumption, and better graphic processors and solutions, which bode well for the semiconductor industry.
Overall investors’ sentiment remains bullish. The latest weekly American Association of Individual Investors sentiment survey shows that 43.2% of respondents remain bullish on stock markets for the next six months, well above the historical average of 37.5%.
In this respect, we will get more details from the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index and the University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index for March this week.
Meanwhile, China has enforced new guidelines that will phase out U.S. processors in government computers and servers. The new guidelines will effectively block chips of Intel Corp. INTC and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. AMD from being exported to China.
The CEO of the embattled aerospace giant The Boeing Co. BA Dave Calhoun will step down at the end of 2024. This will be an important part of a broad management overhaul. Larry Kellner, chairman of the board, will be succeeded by Steve Mollenkopf to pick a new CEO.
On the other hand, biotech bigwig Amgen Inc. AMGN has decided to make a foray into an overcrowded field of developing a next-generation weight loss drug. This field has so far been dominated by Novo Nordisk A/S NVO and Eli Lilly and Co. LLY.
However, Amgen has claimed that its injectable treatment will be different from the existing injectable therapies. A section of analysts expects the market size of this therapy to reach $100 billion by the end of the decade.
In the cryptocurrency space, Bitcoin reclaimed the crucial $70,000 level. The largest crypto hit an all-time high of $73,797.68 on Mar 14. Thereafter, it entered into a correction mode declining more than 15% last week. On Mar 25, Bitcoin closed above 70,000 after briefly touching $71,239.31 in late afternoon trading.
On the economic data front, the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development jointly announced that New Home sales in February fell to 662,000 units, missing the consensus estimate of 678,000 units. The metric for January was revised upward to 664,000 units from 661,000 units reported earlier.
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