Coming off one of the best trading days of the year last Friday — which saw the Dow rise +846 points, the S&P 500 +96 and the Nasdaq +396 points — pre-market futures are giving some of these windfall gains back. The Dow is currently -108 points, the S&P 500 is -16 and the Nasdaq -79. The small-cap Russell 2000 has slipped -5 points.
We are devoid any major economic or earnings reports ahead of today’s opening bell. The market appears to still be digesting the big turnaround in Fed sentiment, when last Friday morning at Jackson Hole Fed Chair Jerome Powell looked past creeping inflation levels toward perceived rising levels of unemployment. This has led Powell — and presumably the rest of the Fed — toward a 25 basis-point (bps) interest rate cut at its September meeting mid-month.
Perhaps a bit of this morning’s slight selloff, aside from booking healthy profits, resides in the notion that a 25 bps reduction in the Fed funds rate is not about to solve all our problems. This would bring rates to between 4.00-4.25%, where we last were back in December of 2022. Further, the road ahead for future rate cuts remains murky; a lot will indeed still rest on inflation rates in the months ahead.
What to Expect from the Stock Market Today
After the open this morning, New Home Sales for July will be released. They are expected to tick up to 632K seasonally adjusted, annualized units, from 627K in June, still among the lowest monthly prints of the past few years. It would mark the third-straight month sub-650K, after notching 705K new home sales in April of this year.
Existing Home Sales came out last week, surprising to the upside to 4.01 million seasonally adjusted, annualized units for July — still the third-lowest tally year to date. Thirty-year mortgage rates had been coming down throughout June, but ramped back up to 6.75% by mid-July, helping sandbag the housing market for existing homes.
New Home Sales are obviously the province of the homebuilders, all of which rallied Friday following Powell’s Jackson Hole speech. The majors all gained more than +5% on the day, with KB Home (KBH) rising nearly +7% for the session. Thus far, we’ve seen Multi-family homes far outpace Single-family, largely due to demand as household formation takes a somewhat different turn from previous cycles.
What’s in Store for the Rest of the Week?
NVIDIA (NVDA) earnings are expected after the closing bell this Wednesday, the last of the so-called “Magnificent 7” stocks to report. The growth rates at what is now the largest company by market cap in the world remain staggering: the chip giant is expected to fetch +47% earnings growth in Q2, and +53.6% in revenues. Shares have risen +35.2% year to date, and over +1200% since the year 2020. Currently, NVIDIA carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) rating.
The biggest economic print of the week comes out Friday morning: Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE), the Fed’s preferred gauge of inflation. It’s expected to remain at +2.6% on headline for July, as it had been for June. This wouldn’t be high enough to cause added worry about rising costs that might jeopardize the near-certain rate cut, but it is still off the optimal +2% rate. Core PCE is expected to tick up 10 bps to +2.9%. Keep an eye out for any higher-than-expected prints.
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NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA): Free Stock Analysis Report KB Home (KBH): Free Stock Analysis ReportThis article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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