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November 25, 2024
DOW: 44,712
S&P: 5,994
Nasdaq: 19,064
10YR T-Note: 4.29%
Bitcoin: 95,211
VIX: 14.78
Gold: 2,632.40
Crude Oil:69.87
Prices Current as of 10:21 am
Source: CNBC
Don Selkin, the creator and innovator of the "Fair Value" numbers, as its Chief Market Strategist on the Newbridge platform has given CNBC and its Predecessor, these numbers every day for the over 40 years - never missing a single day, as well as given the fair value for the Nasdaq 100 futures since their introduction in 1996 and the Dow Jones stock index futures since 1997. Mr. Selkin has also been quoted in several publications including but not limited to Bloomberg News, New York Post, Reuters, and The New York Times. Mr. Selkin's Fair Value numbers are included in the U.S.
Futures Report broadcast on CNBC every day before the market
opens attributing "Newbridge Securities" as the source. In addition, NSC provides to its professionals, their clients and the public access to Don Selkin's more in depth financial market views.
The market did very well last Friday as the Dow reached another record high while the other indices lagging somewhat except for the Russell 2000 of small stocks.
For instance, the Dow gained 426 to a best ever 44,296 led by advances in AXP, CAT, GS, HD, JPM and MSFT for a change so once again it was financials that are leading the way.
The S&P gained 20 to 5969 on several technology advances and the financials as well. The Nasdaq was restrained to some extent by weakness in NVDA, GOOG because of the potential antitrust issues and AMZN.
NVDA was the highlighted earnings event last week and on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday before its results were announced, the financial stations were obsessed with “experts” who kept pushing the theme that its results would be stellar due to the limitless demand for its Blackwell graphics processing unit with price targets in the range of 165 to 175.
So what did this do and it resulted in humongous buying of upside calls in the range of 142 to 165 for supposed automatic gains. Except the problem was that on Friday’s options expiration date, in an overall powerful market, the stock dropped almost 5 dollars down to 141.95 on huge volume of 236 million shares. It also meant that there were 1.6 million call options bought in the 142 to 165 range which ended up WORTHLESS. This meant that hundreds of millions of dollars went down the drain for those who believed the “experts” predictions for last week!
And of course on Friday’s large down day in the stock there was not a word about it from these experts who sort of disappeared. So the answer to what happened is what my grandmother used to say years ago, namely that “Everything today is a business,” meaning that the market makers pushed the stock lower so that they would be the ones to benefit from this sudden drop in the stock despite the ostensibly bullish report. Perhaps the stock should eventually get to their price targets but not last week, which is why most options expire worthless for any given day.
The hero once again was the Russell 2000 which gained 42 points to 2406 on strength in financials while the VIX fell to 15.24 on the overall gains in the major indices.
Markets have been volatile over the last few weeks, losing ground in the runup to elections in November, then surging following the new Presidential victory, before falling again. The S&P steadily rose last week to within close range of its record and is now within about 0.5% of its all-time high set two weeks ago.
Several retailers jumped after giving encouraging financial updates. GAP soared 12% after handily beating analysts’ third-quarter earnings and revenue expectations, while raising its own revenue forecast for the year. Discount retailer ROST advanced by 2% after raising its earnings forecast for the year.
SATS fell by 3% after DirecTV called off its purchase of that company’s Dish Network unit.
A majority of stocks in the S&P gained ground, but those gains were kept in check by slumps for several big technology companies.
Nvidia fell 3.2%. Its pricey valuation makes it among the heaviest influences on whether the broader market gains or loses ground. The company has grown into a nearly $3.6 trillion behemoth because of demand for its chips used in artificial-intelligence technology and we went into the disappointing call options play as previously mentioned.
INTU, which makes TurboTax and other accounting software, fell by 6% as it gave investors a quarterly earnings forecast that fell short of analysts’ expectations.
Facebook owner META dropped 0.7% following a decision by the Supreme Court to allow a multibillion-dollar class action investors’ lawsuit to proceed against the company. It stems from the privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm.
Treasury yields held relatively steady in the bond market. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.41% from 4.42% late Thursday.
In the crypto market, bitcoin hovered around $99,000, according to CoinDesk. It has more than doubled this year and first surpassed the $99,000 level on Thursday.
Third-quarter earnings season are coming to an end and the lineup for this holiday-shortened week is: tonight – A and ZM; Tuesday – ADI, ADSK, ANF, CRWD, DELL, HPQ, WDAY, DKS, KSS, BBY, M, URBN.
Economic reports will see: Tuesday – November Consumer Confidence, November new home sales; Wednesday – October durable goods orders, 3Q G.D.P., October personal income and spending, weekly jobless claims.
