The Buzz on Business for March 27th, 2024

Financial markets, like most institutions, thrive under strong leadership. Whether it be a business, a community organization, a family, or even your favorite sports team, strong leaders help all achieve their best. In the stock market, leadership typically means a sector, and for most of the last five months, leadership in the stock market has fallen to the semiconductor stocks, and they have more than risen to the challenge.

From the end of October last year until the first week of this month, The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose over 60 percent. Yes, you heard that right—60%! This is a remarkable, almost unbelievable performance.

In the last three weeks, that same semiconductor index has fallen by ten percent. While the S&P 500 has continued to rally another three or four percent, the broader market has done so on mostly falling volume and has seemed directionless and lethargic in the process.

So, will the semis resume the mantle of leadership? Or will another sector, maybe the banks, the retailers or maybe manufacturing stocks step up? Or will we see a continuation of the meandering, sideways markets we’ve seen over the last few weeks?

That’s something we’ll be watching closely here at the Buzz on Business.

Stock Market Report

Lots of green numbers all up and down the giant quote machine on Wednesday afternoon. Stocks had a good day. Bonds had a good day. Volume was light, and that’s not great, but we’ll take it.

• The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 478 points. That's 1.2%. And it closed at 39,760.
• The S&P 500 was up 9/10 of a percent. That's 45 points, and it closed at 5249. That's a new all-time high for the S&P.
• The NASDAQ Composite was up one half of one percent, 84 points, and it closed at 16,400.
• And the small caps had another good day. The Russell 2000 was up 2.1 percent, 44 points, and it closed at 2,114.

Bond Market Report

Rates were down across the board.

• The 2-year treasury closed at 4.568%. That's off three basis points.
• The 20-year was off five ticks, and it closed at 4.445%.

Oil, Gold, and Bitcoin

• Oil was up $0.43 and closed at $81.65.
• Gold had a great day. It was up $35.50 and closed to 2212.70
• Bitcoin was off $2319.40 and closed at $68,693.12.

Stocks Continue to Surprise

Remember yesterday on this very podcast where we said that we expected another sideways, lethargic day, yesterday, in the stock market? Do you remember that? We were wrong

Stocks opened higher, rallied throughout and closed at their highs for the day. Advancing stocks led declining stocks by over 4 to 1. Volume wasn't great, but it was higher than Tuesday and a bit higher than it’s been. So how do we explain this rally? We have no idea

There was nothing on the economic calendar that would even draw the slightest notice from Wall Street traders. I mean, the Treasury auctioned off 7-year notes, and the auction went better than expected. But. Yeah. Me neither.

We do get some news today.

• It's Thursday, so initial and continuing jobless claims will be released at 8:30 AM Eastern Time.
• The gross domestic product for the fourth quarter is due out. Economists expect that the economy grew at a 3.2% annual rate in the fourth quarter. That's down from a 4.9% rate in the third quarter.
• We get the consumer sentiment numbers out of the University of Michigan.
• And pending home sales for February.

With the possible exception of a surprise from the labor market, none of this is likely to move the markets. Everybody, including all of us here at the Ministry of Truth eagerly await the inflation data due out tomorrow.

We will have it all for you on Monday.