The Democrats' path back to power might start in places like this Appalachian town
PAINTSVILLE, Ky. — Janet Lynn Stumbo leaned on her cane and surveyed the two dozen or so voters who had convened in a small Appalachian town to meet with the chair of the Kentucky Democratic Party.
A former Kentucky Supreme Court justice, the 70-year-old Stumbo said the event was 'the biggest Democratic gathering I have ever seen in Johnson County,' an enclave where Republican Donald Trump got 85% of the presidential vote last November.
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Stock Market Today: Market rises on China talks originally appeared on TheStreet. Updated: 11:41 a.m. ET. Stocks reversed early losses after President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke for more than 90 minutes Thursday morning and agreed to a high-level meeting on trade disputes in the near future. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index was up 0.4% to 5,995. The Nasdaq Composite Index had risen 0.7% to 19,592. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was sporting a 0.3% gain to 42,561. The call also touched on Chinese reluctance to approve export licenses on rare earth minerals, critical components used in the manufacture of electric vehicles. No resolution was announced, however. Auto makers have been struggling to obtain enough of materials to make high-end magnets and have feared having to shut down assembly lines with the materials, especially dysprosium and terbium. Trump said the call came to "a positive conclusion." 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Both suggest a weakening jobs market ahead of Fridays monthly unemployment report. Happy Thursday. We're doing something a little different today. We're kicking off the Stock Market Today column with comments from Stephen 'Sarge' Guilfoyle's daily Market Recon. This is the type of great analysis he provides every day over in TheStreet Pro. It could have gotten ugly, one might have thought. The information started trickling out on Wednesday morning. It certainly wasn't pretty. There was no bouquet of flowers tossed down from on high to brighten the mood. There would be no aroma of freshly baked bread wafting across the street to disguise the wretched stench of decay. There would be no knight in shining armor that could arise from the shadows to defend the citizenry from their fears. Still, as the numbers hit publication... as viewpoints expressing pessimism spread ... equity markets hung in there, supported by demand for debt securities that suppressed yields. That suppressed interest rates. So, it was. So now, it has been written. Suddenly, after a spate of negative reports had taken stocks down from their early morning and mid-morning highs, bond traders started buying U.S. Treasuries. On Wednesday, the U.S. 10-Year note, our nation's benchmark debt security, went out paying just 4.36%, down 11 basis points for the day. The 2-Year Note yielded just 3.88% (-8 bps) by day's end. The prospect for lower interest rates going forward allowed stocks to breathe and hold their levels on a day that they might otherwise have suffered a bout of profit taking. Just a day after investors had seen the S&P 500 technically confirm last Thursday's bullish change of trend. Friday's Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Report for May could still turn markets on their ear, Or not. The "big, beautiful bill" could pass. Or not. Talks between Pres. Trump and China's Pres. Xi could go well. Or not. Heads on a swivel, gang. Two sources of water. Clean socks. Full battle rattle. What impacted the markets on Wednesday? What's about to impact our marketplace? Let's go... Uh oh. On Wednesday morning, the ADP Report on private sector hiring for May showed just 37,000 jobs created during the month. This was the fewest jobs shown as having been created by this report for any single month in more than two years. This shows a deceleration from April's creation of 60,000 private sector jobs and badly missed the consensus view for 110,000 jobs created. This does not necessarily mean that Friday's Bureau of Labor Statistics print will be weak, but it could. Anything this ugly on Friday will not pass unnoticed by investors. The ISM Non-Manufacturing Index hit the tape at 49.9 (50 is the line in these surveys between expansion and contraction), just a few days after the ISM Manufacturing Index had crossed the tape at 48.5. The real worry for May is the component labeled "New Orders," which is the single most important item in any business survey. For the month New Orders printed at 46.4 for Services and 47.6 for Manufacturing. That's nasty. Inventories and Backlogged Orders both also showed decay. Didn't anything show expansion? Oh, you bet your tail something did. Inflation did. Prices printed at a red hot 68.7 for the services economy and a white hot 69.4 for the manufacturing economy. Does that mean that we'll see reacceleration of consumer level inflation for May? I would think this is likely. We'll almost certainly see that producer level inflation has come back to life. The Federal Reserve released their Beige Book on Wednesday afternoon. The Beige Book, for the new kids, is a central bank publication containing anecdotal economic information from across the Fed's 12 regional districts, released eight times a year ahead of policy decisions. The Fed will make its next decision on monetary policy on June 18. On overall economic activity: "Reports across the 12 Federal Reserve Districts indicate that economic activity has declined slightly since the previous report. Half of the Districts reported slight to moderate declines in activity, three Districts reported no change, and three Districts reported slight growth." Boston... "Economic activity decreased slightly overall." New York... "Economic activity in the Second District continued to decline modestly amid heightened uncertainty." Philadelphia... "Business activity declined modestly in the current Beige Book period, as it did in the last period." Minneapolis... "The District contracted slightly overall." Kansas City... "Overall activity declined moderately, driven by lower retail spending, a decline in the demand for single-family homes, and a slight contraction in manufacturing." San Francisco... "Economic activity slowed slightly." Elsewhere, Richmond, Atlanta and Chicago reported slight expansion, while Dallas, Cleveland and St. Louis reported no change in business activity. Fed Funds Futures markets trading in Chicago are now pricing in a 76% probability for a quarter-point rate cut on Sept. 17 and a 54% likelihood for another quarter-point rate cut on Oct. 29. That would be it for the year. Two more rate quarter-percentage point cuts are currently being priced in for 2026. The Congressional Budget Office, which is non-partisan, but not always correct, assessed the president's "big, beautiful bill" and reported on Wednesday its expectation that over 10 years the bill, if passed into law, would increase deficits by $2.4 trillion. There is a real concern over passage in the Senate now, with a number of fiscal conservatives fretting that the budget cuts in the bill don't go far enough and other senators showing dismay that these cuts go too far. I tend to agree with the fiscal hawks here, as that is my nature as an economist. That, my friends, is neither here nor there. What matters is that the U.S. Dollar Index traded lower on this news and that while Treasury securities showed strength due to weakness in the above economic news, that the long end of the spectrum of Treasury securities could become unanchored should the federal government continue to behave in a fiscally reckless manner. The weaker dollar would indeed be inflationary. On Wednesday, the S&P 500 closed essentially flat (+0.01%), while the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.32% thanks to a 1.39% run made by the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index. Marvell Technologies () and ON Semiconductor () led that group for the day. Otherwise, not a lot changed on Wednesday. The Dow Transports gave up 0.46%, while the small to midcap indices all gave back between 0.2% and 0.26%. Six of the 11 S&P sector SPDR ETFs closed out Wednesday's regular session in the green, led by the Communication Services () fund that only gained 0.64%. While only five of these funds closed in the red, Energy () gave up 1.95% as exploration, refining and pipeline stocks all took a pounding, and the Utilities () gave back 1.75%. Winners beat losers on the NYSE on Wednesday by just three issues. This was largely a 50/50 split. Winners did lead losers at the Nasdaq by a 6-to-5 margin. Advancing volume did take a nifty 65.5% share of composite Nasdaq-listed trade on Wednesday, but just a 45.8% share of composite NYSE-listed activity. Most importantly, on a day-over-day basis, aggregate trade contracted across NYSE-listings by 5.2% and across Nasdaq-listed securities by 3.7%. Aggregate trade across the membership of the S&P 500 also fell 9% short of the trading volume 50-day simple moving average for the index on Wednesday after falling just 4% short of that line in the sand on Tuesday. Does this render Wednesday's market as less significant that it might otherwise be? In short, technically, the answer is "yes." Price discovery is always more meaningful and more impactful when increased trading volume implies increased professional participation. Readers will see just how incredibly accurate technical analysis has been through this recent period. On Wednesday, the index, though quiet, did build on Tuesday's confirmation of Thursday's change in trend. Is Advanced Micro Devices () getting ready to make a serious run at industry leader Nvidia () ? Is Lisa Su getting ready to make a serious run at Jensen Huang? Maybe. Check out these past few moves that largely flew under the radar: June 4th: AMD announces the acquisition of open-source software company Brium in an effort to further its prowess in generative artificial intelligence. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. May 28th: AMD announced the acquisition of silicon photonics company Enosemi to boost co-packaging and the firm's prowess in generative AI. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. May 20th: AMD announced the divestiture of its ZT Systems, which is a data center manufacturing company for $3 billion. But the firm retained ZT's 1,200-person engineering team at a cost of about $1.6 billion or $1.33 million per engineer. This should improve AMD's competitiveness in the data center GPU market. My Conclusion? AMD is back among my top 10 holdings when ranked by weighting (number 10) after a long hiatus. We skipped much of the 2024 decline. Our net basis is currently $99.91. I expect to continue to buy the stock on weakness when that opportunity arises going forward. Nvidia remains my 15th heaviest allocation. I have no plans to add. 08:30 - Initial Jobless Claims (Weekly): Expecting 230K, Last 229K. 08:30 - Continuing Claims (Weekly): Last 1.919M. 08:30 - Balance of Trade (Apr): Last $-140.5B. 08:30 - Non-Farm Productivity (Q1-F): Flashed -0.8% q/q. 08:30 - Unit Labor Costs (Q1-F): Flashed 5.7% q/q. 10:30 - Natural Gas Inventories (Weekly): Last +101B cf. 12:00 p.m. - Speaker: Reserve Board Gov. Adriana Kugler. 1:30 - Speaker: Philadelphia Fed Pres. Patrick Harker. Before the Open: () (.52) After the Close: () (1.57), () (.81), () (2.60) At the time of publication, Guilfoyle was long AMD, NVDA equity. Stock Market Today: Market rises on China talks first appeared on TheStreet on Jun 5, 2025 This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Jun 5, 2025, where it first appeared.
