Markets eye records, Fed Chair, rate cut odds: Market Takeaways

Yahoo

4 hours ago

Yahoo Finance Senior Reporter Allie Canal joins Asking for a Trend with Josh Lipton to go over her main takeaways of the trading day: markets continuing to hover near record highs, investor focus on who the next Federal Reserve chair might be, and shifting conviction in the possibility of a Fed rate cut in July.
To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Asking for a Trend here.
US stocks climbing with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq closing just points away from those record highs and Yahoo finances Alec now joins us now with the trading day takeaways Ali.
Josh, we were so close you cheering in the newsroom, we said it's going to happen and we just missed those records there. So all eyes were on the records. We got some, we didn't get others, the biggies we didn't get, like you were just saying just points for the S&P 500 three points, the number that we were watching was 6144, 6141. Same with the Nasdaq composite, we were not too far off of those record highs either and then we did see the Dow Jones Industrial Average close in the green there up about nine tenths of a percent. So we could take some solace in the fact that there's green across the screen. Now if we look at the Nasdaq 100, another record there. We saw a record on Tuesday, so that just continues to build on to those gains, even the equal weight Nasdaq 100 continues to trend upward. And looking under the hood of the Nasdaq, you did have some positive momentum for certain stocks like Nvidia. We saw that record yesterday, have another record today and if you take a look from the April 8th bottom there, you can just see this move upwards to the top nearly 50% and across tech, if we look from that April 8th bottom, you'll really see that there's a lot of momentum for many of these names here. Broadcom, even Tesla, Amazon, the only big one in my view that's in the red here is Apple, struggling a little bit and that has a lot to do with some more uncertainties on the tariff front along with some disappointments around its AI launch. But the fact that we're continuing to see this momentum chasing is an encouraging sign to the Wall Street Bulls. Even from a sector perspective, since those April bottoms you see tech again leading, but also communication services, industrials, consumer discretionary, financials, this really seems to be a broad based rally here.
Yeah, I was talking to Schaefer in the newsroom talking about there's that momentum trade. You know, how much are a theme in a trend that's big and just investors are saying, listen, they're going to buy their winners because they just anticipate them to stay winners, you know. And you mentioned, you know, we talk Nvidia today, that AI boom. I mean, there was a question about that whether they would continue Ali, but then we heard from those big tech names they were going to keep spending, spending, spending, the sovereigns are spending and that's worked as well.
Yeah, and I've been speaking to strategist all week about the tech boom and whether it continues to have legs and they tell me that it does. That there's a lot of cash on the sidelines. And really these companies with their big balance sheets, they allow investors to be insulated from a lot of these risks. And that really seems to be key here. Investors are just looking past some of these noisier headlines. And then another big headline we got today was who will be the next Fed chair. Now this is based on reporting for both Yahoo Finance and the Wall Street Journal. This is your list here on who Trump is considering. He wants to name someone as early as September. So Fed chair Jerome Powell will continue to be in that position at this time. So perhaps a shadow Fed situation. Scott Bess and Treasury Secretary is reportedly in the running, Kevin Hassett, Chris Waller, that's who the journal reported, but our Jennifer Schonberger said that Trump is no longer considering him since he voted in the last Fed meeting to keep rates on hold and we know that the President wants a very dovish Fed chairman at this point. He wants those rate cuts. We've seen him go against Powell. Whether or not he'll get that this summer, that's the big TBD.
Yeah, I mean we know Trump wants them cutting. He wants them cutting right now. He's a real estate developer, Ali. Of course he wants them cutting. It is about Waller because you know, Waller Bowman, we just heard from, they were kind of suggesting, hey, a cut could come next month.
And you wonder if they were maybe jockeying for that position, but there's still a lot of unknowns at this point. And when we talk about, you know, a rate cut potentially in July here, markets are certainly still pricing in a September rate cut. You see those odds at 70%. However, when you look at July, it's doubled compared to a week ago. So there might be a bit more conviction that maybe we could see something this summer. We do have PCE inflation data out on Friday. If that continues to trend downward and if perhaps next week for that jobs report, we see, you know, the unemployment rate escalate, we see other labor market cracks, maybe that convinces the Fed to cut. I just think it's a little too early at this point. And Jerome Powell has been very good at telegraphing what he thinks will come next. There's not always a ton of surprises, not to say that we couldn't see a surprise. I just would be a little wary to put money on a July cut at this point.
All right, we shall see. Thank you, Ali.
Yep.