The Buzz on Business for July 29th, 2024

The inflation data released on Friday came in pretty much as expected and, to us, appears to set the table for rate cuts, perhaps as soon as this Wednesday, when two days of Fed meetings conclude, but surely no later than the Fed’s September meeting.

The month-over-month Core Personal Consumption Index (And here at the Buzz on Business, we focus primarily on the month-over-month figures. The year-over-year figures are really not much more than the sum of the last twelve month-over-month results), the month-over-month Core PCE Index, for the month of June, came in at an as expected 0.20% increase. That’s still above the Fed’s target, and still too high, but combined with the other inflation measures that have been released over the last month, seems to show that inflation is easing.

There is still work to be done on inflation and we had a scare earlier this year but unless, we start getting some bad data, it looks as if rates will start coming down and as we always say on this podcast, “Don’t fight the Fed.”

Wait. Do we always say that?

Stock Market Report

A pretty good day for stocks and bonds on Friday. A welcome reprieve from all the selling we’ve seen lately. Gainers exceeded losers by almost four to one while we would have liked to have seen higher volume, we’ll take it.

• The Dow Jones Industrials we up a stout 1.60% on Friday. That translates into 654 points and a close back above 40,000 at 40,589.
• The S&P 500 posted a 1.10% gain, good for 60 points and it closed at 5,459.
• The NASDAQ Composite closed at 17,358. That’s a one percent, 176-point gain.
• And the small caps led the way. The Russell 2000 was up 1.70%, 37 points, and they start the week at 2,260.

Bond Market Report

Rates were down across the board on Friday.

• The yield on the 2-year treasury fell by five basis points and closed at 4.389%.
• Likewise, the 20-year was off four ticks and it closed at 4.546%.

Oil, Gold, and Bitcoin

• Oil resumed its down trend. After it posted gains on Wednesday and Thursday it lost $1.12 on Friday and closed at $77.16. Oil was nearly $85 a barrel back on the 4^th of July.
• Interest rates were down so gold must be up, and it was $23.70, and a troy ounce will now set you back $2,385.40.
• And Bitcoin had a pretty good day. It was up $3,303.57 and at 4:00 PM ET Friday stood, back above $88,000 for the first time in almost two months and it closed at $68,016.38.

Busy Week Ahead: Earnings and Economic Reports

In addition to the good news on inflation, Friday saw the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment numbers exceed expectations. This survey of consumers has been in a downtrend most of the year.

We’ve got a busy week ahead here at World Headquarters.

2^nd Quarter earnings are due out for dozens and dozens of public companies which include such names as McDonalds, Microsoft, Starbucks, Facebook parent Meta, Boeing, which we’ll be watching for on Wednesday, Apple, Amazon and Intel, all on Thursday and Exxon Mobile and Chevron on Friday. Again, along with dozens of others. A busy earnings week, indeed.

And the economic calendar is no slouch.

The JOLTS, job openings report, The ADP and the Labor Department’s payroll reports are due out, a bunch of data from manufacturing and the housing sectors to say nothing of the meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee which concludes on Wednesday.

Maybe, maybe there are some days or weeks when you can afford to miss an episode of this podcast, but this week is not one of them. So, whatever you do, remember to keep it right here on the Buzz!