08/01/2023
Greetings, everyone👋🏼The financial world has seen quite an eventful month☺️
🧷Stock Market Performance:
• Stocks have rallied this month, with the S&P 500 up 3% and the Nasdaq Composite gaining 3.8%, both on track for their fifth consecutive positive month.
• The blue-chip Dow jumped 3.1% in July and posted a 13-day advance, matching its longest streak of gains since 1987.
🧷Federal Reserve and Jobs Report:
• The Fed hiked rates to their highest level in over 22 years, and Chair Jerome Powell stated data-driven decisions would be made on a "meeting-by-meeting" basis.
• Investors await the big jobs report, with economists expecting 200,000 jobs added in July after 209,000 in June.
🧷U.S. Treasury Yields:
• U.S. Treasury yields were mixed as investors considered inflation data and the economic outlook.
• At 4:45 a.m. ET, the 10-year Treasury yield was just under one basis point to 3.9787%, and the 2-year yield was down to 4.8911%.
🧷Stock Upgrades and Downgrades:
• Goldman Sachs upgraded oil giant Chevron due to approaching positive free-cash-flow.
• Morgan Stanley downgraded software company Salesforce to equal weight despite reflecting a 23% upside📌
🧷Euro Zone and U.S. Economic Growth:
• Euro zone's GDP expanded by 0.3% in Q2, exceeding expectations of a 0.2% increase.
• In the U.S., the economy expanded at a 2.4% pace, exceeding a Dow Jones consensus estimate of 2%.
🧷Global Demand and Commodity Markets:
• China's growth slowdown may affect global demand for commodities, but India's growth is expected to fill some of the shortfall.
• ANZ bank's analysts predict India's demand for commodities will surge to cover more than half of China's demand shortfall, with energy commodities showing the most significant pick-up☝🏻
🧷China and Japan's Economic Indicators:
• China's factory activity remained in contraction territory for the fourth straight month, with the purchasing manager's index at 49.3.
• The PMI for the non-manufacturing sector in July was 51.3.
• Japan's industrial output climbed 2% in June but fell 0.4% on a year-on-year basis📉