Tech rally, bond yields, metal commodities: Market Takeaways

US equities (^DJI, ^IXIC, ^GSPC) closed out this week with major gains, reversing from the prior week's sell-offs, to put a pin in the best trading week of 2024.

Yahoo Finance markets and data editor Jared Blikre explores this week's biggest trading and market themes alongside Julie Hyman, highlighting the tech rally that propelled the tech-heavy market averages higher this week, the mix of consumer and inflation data and bond market activity (^TYX, ^TNX, ^FVX), and the pricing on precious metal commodities such as gold (GC=F) and copper (HG=F).

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Asking for a Trend.

This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.

Video Transcript

Us stocks, ending the week higher, notching their best week in fact, of the year.

Yahoo Finance is Jared bl.

He joins us now with more on the trading day takeaways.

Hey, Jared, what a week and I think one of the big conclusions here.

Shorts carried out on stretchers.

And let's just take a look at some of the risk action that we saw this week.

I'm going to show you a heat map of our leaders index.

You can see the Sox is number one.

That's semiconductors.

Number two is MJ.

That's cannabis.

We don't talk a lot about that because prices have been depressed but nevertheless very much risk gone all the way down.

Except for Bitcoin bets.

That's gambling.

Arc is innovation of lots of stuff going on here.

And let's take a look at the sector action XL K and XL Y.

So, basically, that's consumer discretionary XL Y XL K is tech.

Those were the only two out performers.

This is the S and P 500.

They were the ones, uh, greater than that in the benchmark even real estate, just barely positive here.

So all in all pretty productive week.

Yeah, and I, I want to point out.

By the way, when we're looking at this and the XL Y Amazon is in there.

So that's just something.

Yeah.

So that's just something to keep in mind that it's still kind of techy.

Yeah, it is.

Yeah.

And I mean, we're talking about all these superlatives and greatest since whenever.

NVIDIA.

Let's just take a quick look at the semiconductors.

NVIDIA up 19%.

And it's getting pretty close to those all time highs.

It's not quite there, but this just looks like a healthy bull flag right now.

So all in all pretty productive week.

Yes.

Let's get to point number two.

And you know what we're see?

We're seeing some green shoots.

I don't know if you remember the wake of the global financial crisis in 2009.

Uh, Dave, Rosie, Rosie was talking about green shoots Dave back in the day.

Well, we got some here.

Um, let me show you one.

This is the NFIB small business index.

Uh, actually, that's not what this is this refinancing.

Yeah, Well, we did see a big increase in refinancing this week.

Yes, so that's one of the items and we got actually a lot of economic data, So let's just kind of tick through this.

This goes back a long ways.

30 years, But we just see the, uh, the inkling of refinancing, and that's as bond yields are coming down.

So as we price in these Fed rate cuts, that should be stimulative.

And that's kind of what we're seeing.

So some more.

We got headline CP I under 3% for the first time since March of 2021 retail sales.

Biggest jump in a year and a half.

Jobless claims, which were looking a little scary A couple of weeks ago.

Those came back down.

They were at a one year high.

They came to a one month low and then again, that NFIB small business that has risen to a two year high.

So good news was good news.

It is so far, you know, I think is this the real acceleration that we see that we were looking for before?

Maybe this could be a bottom here, but we've seen false bottoms and false starts before so it could reverse.

Yes, it could.

Next point we see medals per we haven't talked about medals a lot this week.

We do have gold and at all time highs.

But remember, copper copper was at all time highs a few months ago.

Then it crashed.

It went a bear market.

Let me dial up our future screen here.

And, uh, this is what happened in the in the week of commodities.

You're gonna see this top line.

Let me just go through.

These are all our ticker codes, and I'll decode them for you.

Palladium, aluminium, OJ.

Well, that's orange juice, silver, gold, wheat, copper and corn.

So a lot of metals in here, not only the precious metals, but copper as well.

Some of the industrials and silver is an industrial metal.

So let me just show you the copper chart.

This is gonna be a year to day.

And here's a big bear market.

After reaching all time highs up there, we're just barely inflecting down here.

But that's kind of a positive sign because copper made a big ingredient in the global tech tech trade and chips and all that good stuff.

Is there any kind of inflationary concern around the metals?

Kind of looking up here really interesting because people say, Well, gold is an inflation head.

It can be.

But I think the dynamic here is with rates lowering that does give the chance for inflation to pick up.

But I think it's just that, you know, gold incurs storage costs, and so it's competing against other things.

And when you see rates coming down like that, that just means OK, Um, well, I'm not gonna get the same return on Bonds, so I might as well put it in gold.

And that's kind of how the calculation goes.

I think this record in gold has a lot to do with Central Bank buying.

We've seen huge demand over the years, so I think that's a story that we're gonna continue to hear more about as the years progress.

Interesting.

Thanks a lot, Jared.

Appreciate it.