Latest news with #BespokeInvestmentGroup
CNBC
6 days ago
- Business
- CNBC
Sentiment on stocks collapses the most since the February market top
The latest gauge of investor sentiment is rife with uneasiness. Counterintuitively, some market strategists think that could be a bullish sign that forces traders to get back into the market and drive stocks higher. Bearish individual investor sentiment toward stocks over the next six months rose by more than 10 percentage points, the most since February, in the latest weekly survey by the American Association of Individual Investors. More than two-fifths of investors polled, or 43.2%, are now negative on how stocks will perform through the early part of next year, up from 33% last week. The 10.2-point rise was the most since a 20-point increase shortly after the S&P 500 reached a then-record high on Feb. 19. According to Bespoke Investment Group, the week ending in Aug. 6 was just the fourth period since the bull market began in October 2022 that bearish sentiment had a 10-point weekly increase. "The AAII numbers can be volatile at times, and this survey, whether it's due to an older cohort or some other factor tends to be more negative than others," Bespoke co-founder Paul Hickey told CNBC. "I'll be the first to say that certain sectors of the market have gotten frothy, but there's also a non-trivial contingent of people we talk to who are increasingly worried that things are about to fall apart, and that's not usually the sentiment you see around peaks." Investor sentiment is viewed by many as a contrarian indicator. The idea is that when investors are bearish, they are more likely to have already sold stocks and have more cash on hand to put to work. And when more are bullish, the reverse is true. "If the poll is bearish, that is encouraging," Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research, said in an email. "The institutional investor (smart) money tends to look at retail investors as 'dumb money' and tends to make near-term price performance projections accordingly." Although market volatility has dramatically lowered since the start of the year, a series of negative news and data releases — such as tariff hikes on top trading partners, threats on pharmaceutical tariffs, the Federal Reserve's decision to maintain rates and a weak July jobs report — has weighed on sentiment and kept investors wary of high valuations at bay. At the same time, stocks have chugged along, driven by strength in corporate earnings results and consumer spending, AI enthusiasm, technical strength and more. The three major U.S. indexes are each in the green for the year and are tracking for a weekly gain.
Yahoo
05-08-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Why the market is shrugging off Trump's firing of the BLS chief
Trump fired the head of the BLS on Friday, but so far, markets have looked past the shock decision. Sources say there are a variety of other sources investors can use to assess the employment picture. Strong earnings and higher rate-cut odds are powering stocks higher on Monday. August kicked off with a shocker, with Donald Trump firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after a less-than-rosy July employment report. The move sparked prognostications about untrustworthy government data going forward and comparisons to China, which some believe is uninvestable due to issues with data quality. Then why is the market unfazed as trading kicks off on Monday? Stocks rallied to start the week, with the Dow up almost 500 points at midday and the Nasdaq Composite jumping as much as 2%. For now, markets are focused on other things, like the higher odds of a September rate cut after the employment picture suddenly soured. "Obviously, the firing was unconventional. That's pretty much everything with this administration compared to previous administrations, but at this point, there is so much private data that the market can look at other sources," Paul Hickey, cofounder of Bespoke Investment Group, told Business Insider. Apart from the BLS statistics that investors already parse, there's a patchwork of private and public data, including ADP data, hiring and firing data from a range of consulting firms, and labor market sentiment indicators from sources like the Conference Board. "There are private sources of data, and if they are moving in the opposite direction from the government data, then it becomes an indicator that something is off with the statistics,"Aleksandar Tomic, Associate Dean, Strategy, Innovation, & Technology at Boston College, told Business Insider. Trump said Erika McEntarfer's firing was justified and that the July data had been manipulated to make the administration look bad. He did not offer evidence for this claim, though White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett said the revisions in the data are "hard evidence." The July revisions were substantial, showing that the US added nearly 260,000 fewer jobs in May and June than had been initially reported. Trump and Republicans have also criticized earlier revisions, including last year's that showed over 800,000 fewer jobs added in the 12 months leading up to March 2024. The irony of Trump's anger over the July jobs numbers is that the weak report has pushed up the odds of the September rate cut to nearly 90%, getting the president closer to seeing the Fed loosen monetary policy as he's been demanding all year. But for investors, things like the robust GDP report for the second quarter and solid corporate earnings, particularly among mega-cap tech giants, are boosting the outlook for the market even as Trump's move stirs some uncertainty. For Sergio Altomare, a former senior enterprise architect at the Fed, the next big question is who will replace McEntarfer at the helm of the BLS. "I think the ultimate impact is going to take time to sort itself out, but I think really the immediate thing is, who gets appointed? What is their background? What does the data show? Is it dramatically different from what we're seeing?" Altomare said that it will be difficult to properly assess the impact of Trump's decision on financial markets until these questions have clear answers. Luckily for markets, some answers could come soon. Trump has said that in the coming days, he'll nominate a new BLS chief, as well as a replacement for Fed Gov. Adriana Kugler, who resigned on Friday. Both positions require confirmation by the Senate. It is also worth noting that some agree with the president's decision. For his part, investing legend Ray Dalio said on Monday that he, too, would probably fire the BLS chief. In a post on X, he described the agency's process for making key economic estimates as "obsolete and error-prone," with no plan to fix it. "The revisions brought the numbers toward private estimates that were in fact much better," Dalio said. Read the original article on Business Insider
Yahoo
05-08-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Why the market is shrugging off Trump's firing of the BLS chief
Trump fired the head of the BLS on Friday, but so far, markets have looked past the shock decision. Sources say there are a variety of other sources investors can use to assess the employment picture. Strong earnings and higher rate-cut odds are powering stocks higher on Monday. August kicked off with a shocker, with Donald Trump firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after a less-than-rosy July employment report. The move sparked prognostications about untrustworthy government data going forward and comparisons to China, which some believe is uninvestable due to issues with data quality. Then why is the market unfazed as trading kicks off on Monday? Stocks rallied to start the week, with the Dow up almost 500 points at midday and the Nasdaq Composite jumping as much as 2%. For now, markets are focused on other things, like the higher odds of a September rate cut after the employment picture suddenly soured. "Obviously, the firing was unconventional. That's pretty much everything with this administration compared to previous administrations, but at this point, there is so much private data that the market can look at other sources," Paul Hickey, cofounder of Bespoke Investment Group, told Business Insider. Apart from the BLS statistics that investors already parse, there's a patchwork of private and public data, including ADP data, hiring and firing data from a range of consulting firms, and labor market sentiment indicators from sources like the Conference Board. "There are private sources of data, and if they are moving in the opposite direction from the government data, then it becomes an indicator that something is off with the statistics,"Aleksandar Tomic, Associate Dean, Strategy, Innovation, & Technology at Boston College, told Business Insider. Trump said Erika McEntarfer's firing was justified and that the July data had been manipulated to make the administration look bad. He did not offer evidence for this claim, though White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett said the revisions in the data are "hard evidence." The July revisions were substantial, showing that the US added nearly 260,000 fewer jobs in May and June than had been initially reported. Trump and Republicans have also criticized earlier revisions, including last year's that showed over 800,000 fewer jobs added in the 12 months leading up to March 2024. The irony of Trump's anger over the July jobs numbers is that the weak report has pushed up the odds of the September rate cut to nearly 90%, getting the president closer to seeing the Fed loosen monetary policy as he's been demanding all year. But for investors, things like the robust GDP report for the second quarter and solid corporate earnings, particularly among mega-cap tech giants, are boosting the outlook for the market even as Trump's move stirs some uncertainty. For Sergio Altomare, a former senior enterprise architect at the Fed, the next big question is who will replace McEntarfer at the helm of the BLS. "I think the ultimate impact is going to take time to sort itself out, but I think really the immediate thing is, who gets appointed? What is their background? What does the data show? Is it dramatically different from what we're seeing?" Altomare said that it will be difficult to properly assess the impact of Trump's decision on financial markets until these questions have clear answers. Luckily for markets, some answers could come soon. Trump has said that in the coming days, he'll nominate a new BLS chief, as well as a replacement for Fed Gov. Adriana Kugler, who resigned on Friday. Both positions require confirmation by the Senate. It is also worth noting that some agree with the president's decision. For his part, investing legend Ray Dalio said on Monday that he, too, would probably fire the BLS chief. In a post on X, he described the agency's process for making key economic estimates as "obsolete and error-prone," with no plan to fix it. "The revisions brought the numbers toward private estimates that were in fact much better," Dalio said. Read the original article on Business Insider
CNBC
04-08-2025
- Business
- CNBC
Santoli's Monday market notes: Dip-buying impulse intact, meme stocks reenergized
(These are the market notes on today's action by Mike Santoli, CNBC's Senior Markets Commentator. See today's video update from Mike above.) The dip-buying impulse remains intact. Bespoke Investment Group reports that 2025 has been the second-most-profitable year since 1993 when blindly buying the S & P 500 after a down day. The market treating Friday's setback as a standard seasonal shakeout for now: Overbought indexes, a bit of speculative froth and complacency about the state of the economy under tariffs set us up for a bit of a jolt, then came Friday's tumble accompanied by a pop in the VIX above 20. S & P 500 still hasn't recouped all of Friday's pullback, can't sound an "all clear" yet. We broke an unusually long streak above the 20-day moving average Friday, today's bounce takes the index just above it. The AI plays reasserting itself after most Mag7 earnings confirmed the broad theme is intact. NDX the clear outperformer. Not many macro releases to chew over this week, so it's mostly about seeing if last week's dip softened up stocks enough to lower the bar for the remaining earnings reports to trigger more favorable stock responses. The jarring shortfall in job growth and the downward revisions reset the bull case from "The economy seems resilient enough to withstand a wait-and-see Fed" to "Economy is slowing enough to prompt a September rate cut to underpin the rally." Treasury yields getting no real lift after Friday's severe drop post-jobs report, the dollar backsliding as well, helping to prop up rate-sensitive groups like homebuilders. Meme stocks reenergized. JOBY , OPEN , the quantum stocks flying... Palantir earnings reaction will be a tell for the speculative crowd.
CNBC
18-07-2025
- Business
- CNBC
A simple options strategy that defines investor risk as the S&P 500 reaches new heights
Markets remain in melt-up mode as shorts run for cover. U.S. equities opened higher once again on Friday morning after the S & P 500 and Nasdaq 100 both notched another closing all-time high on Thursday. That is the S & P 500's ninth record close of the year. I believe the S & P 500 will continue to move higher this summer, but I want to use options on SPDR S & P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) to define risk in the event the underinvested and shorts take a break from chasing stocks higher. Another catalyst that has been added into the bull case is the continued lowering inflationary data (or lack of inflation appearing from trade tariffs) coupled with robust initial Q2 earnings reports. Although it's early in the earnings season as the big banks just kicked off the reporting period this week, 51 of the 55 companies that have reported earnings since the start of season this week have beaten consensus analyst EPS estimates. That's a beat rate of 93%, well above the 20-year average beat rate of 63%, Bespoke Investment Group data shows. Optimism abound, but I believe it is also prudent to define risk when investors experience a severe sentiment shift as markets have endured since April. As many strategists tripped over themselves to lower their 2025 S & P 500 price targets subsequent the "liberation day" initial trade tariff sell-off, that highlighted a buying opportunity as the VIX vaulted over 60. Now that these same analysts are readjusting their S & P 500 price targets significantly higher, I have short-term caution on how much more room this melt up may have. However, there is a record amount of money sitting in cash potentially looking to get back in the equity markets and moreover, that is why I prefer to use options to define that risk and exposure. Normally, I would like to utilize a call spread to reduce cost into upside participation. Due to the parabolic move that we have witnessed since the S & P 500 kissed 4,800 in April, I do not want to limit my upside here and I am comfortable risking the (expensive) amount I am paying for this upside call I am buying. Owning the call is more strategic than owning SPY at these levels. I am also using this as a stock replacement strategy as I am closing some of my long SPY position. Buying a SPY call option Bought the Aug. 29 SPY $630 call for $12.90 This call option is a debit of $1,290 This trade was executed when SPY was roughly trading $629 DISCLOSURES: Kilburg is long these $630 calls, long SPY All opinions expressed by the CNBC Pro contributors are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of CNBC, NBC UNIVERSAL, their parent company or affiliates, and may have been previously disseminated by them on television, radio, internet or another medium. THE ABOVE CONTENT IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY . THIS CONTENT IS PROVIDED FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND DOES NOT CONSITUTE FINANCIAL, INVESTMENT, TAX OR LEGAL ADVICE OR A RECOMMENDATION TO BUY ANY SECURITY OR OTHER FINANCIAL ASSET. THE CONTENT IS GENERAL IN NATURE AND DOES NOT REFLECT ANY INDIVIDUAL'S UNIQUE PERSONAL CIRCUMSTANCES. THE ABOVE CONTENT MIGHT NOT BE SUITABLE FOR YOUR PARTICULAR CIRCUMSTANCES. BEFORE MAKING ANY FINANCIAL DECISIONS, YOU SHOULD STRONGLY CONSIDER SEEKING ADVICE FROM YOUR OWN FINANCIAL OR INVESTMENT ADVISOR. Click here for the full disclaimer.
