Dow Adds To Their Winning Streak Making It 9 Days In A Row Image: Bigstock Stocks closed lower yesterday, except for the Dow, which extended their winning streak to 9 days with an additional 0.47%, making it their best winning streak since 2017. The Nasdaq Composite, which has far outpaced most of the other indexes, gave up -2.05%. But they are still up more than 34% YTD. Profit taking, after a blistering first half, and a strong start to the second half, is the likely culprit. But we might also be seeing some position squaring ahead of next week's special rebalancing of the Nasdaq-100. The Nasdaq-100 differs from the Nasdaq Composite in that one has 100 stocks, while the other is comprised of more than 2,500. The Nasdaq-100 also does not include financial companies. It is essentially a concentrated subset of the Nasdaq Composite Index, and focuses on the largest 100 domestic and international stocks. Due to the heavy concentration of big-tech heavyweights like Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, Amazon, Meta, Tesla, and Alphabet, which make up over 55% of the index, and which has catapulted the Nasdaq-100 to more than a 41% gain this year (even higher than the Nasdaq Composite's 34%, and the S&P 500's 18%), the index will go thru a special rebalancing to reduce the weights of the index's largest holdings and increase the weights of others. This rebalancing will take place on Monday July 24. Actually, it will take place before the market opens. Funds that track the index will likely need to sell shares in those with reduced weightings, and buy those with increased weightings. But none of the 'Magnificent Seven' stocks (as those aforementioned mega-cap stocks have become known as), are being removed. They are just having their weightings lessened. In other news, Weekly Jobless Claims yesterday declined by -9,000 to 228,000. Existing Home Sales were down -3.3% m/m to 4.16 million units (annualized) vs. the consensus for 4.23M. On a y/y basis it's down -18.9%. Although, that's a little better than last month's pace of -20.4%. The Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Index came in at -13.5. That was worse than the consensus for -10.2, but an improvement from last month's -13.7. And the Leading Indicators report slipped to -0.7% m/m vs. last month's upwardly revised -0.6% and views for the same. The only 'economic' report on the docket today is the Baker Hughes Rig Count report. But we will get more earnings with 27 companies on deck to report. That number expands to 983 next week. And then 1,606 the week after that, as earnings season kicks into gear. In the meantime, with one more day to go, all of the indexes are up for the week, except for the Nasdaq Composite and Nasdaq-100. But a lot can happen in one day. So we shall see how they all end up. Best, Kevin Matras Executive Vice President, Zacks Investment Research |
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