Tucker Financial Weekly Market Review: June 21st, 2024

Weekly Market Report: June 21st, 2024

Markets lacked any meaningful catalysts last week with a mixed bag of economic reports globally ending with the U.S. seemingly perking up and non-U.S. markets slowing down. Many eyes are cast forward to the looming end of the second quarter and various geopolitical touch points on the horizon with the French elections and first U.S. Presidential debate. Despite NVDA snapping an eight week winning streak, the U.S. S&P 500 (+0.61%) marked yet another record high close (5,505) and emerging (+1.16%) and developed (-0.95%) markets turned in mixed results. Bond yields, commodity markets, and the USD all edged slightly higher on the week leaving the 10yr UST yielding 4.25% and oil back up over the $80 market at $80.73.

Market Anecdotes

• Corporate earnings will need to be a key driver of returns going forward with little room for multiple expansion and dividend payout ratios unlikely to change. FactSet is currently seeing 11.3% growth in 2024 and 14.4% growth in 2025.
• Nvidia became the largest company in the world last week, surpassing MSFT and carrying a larger market cap than the UK and France combined.
• The equity market has been unusually friendly with 31 record closing highs so far this year, a VIX of 12.5, very few 1% daily moves, and only one 2% move this year – the fewest count of 2 handles so far this year since 2017.
• The gap between the Establishment Survey (+1.2mm jobs) and the Household Survey (-100k jobs) over the same period is perplexing to economists and investors alike. Structural labor market changes due to the pandemic and modeling intricacies are both playing a part.
• This week brought a good deal of housing market data which were soft on balance with no relief in sight as U.S. mortgage rates, while down from October 2023’s 8% level, still remain well above 7% with a ‘higher for longer’ Fedspeak echoing in the background.
• The Conference Board’s U.S. LEI has been flashing red since July 2022 and, while still contracting, the magnitude of contraction has been narrowing since April 2023. While this suggests a recession may be averted, there are many other factors still signaling choppy waters ahead.
• Fears of populism and “Frexit” due to the surprise French election outcomes have sent a charge of volatility into European equities. The upcoming snap elections on June 30th/July 7th will show whether the Macron decision to call for snap elections was genius or reckless.

Economic Release Highlights

• U.S. flash PMI for June beat consensus forecasts for both manufacturing (51.7 vs 51.0) and services (55.1 vs 53.7) with the composite coming in at a healthy 54.6.
• Eurozone flash PMI for June came in below forecast for both manufacturing (45.6 vs 48.0) and services (52.6 vs 53.3) pulling the composite (50.8 vs 52.4) down notably versus prior month. UK (C,M,S) also missed to the downside with readings at (51.7, 51.4, 51.2).
• May Retail Sales came in below consensus on the headline (0.1% vs 0.3%) as well as the Ex-Vehicles & Gas (0.1% vs 0.3%) reading.
• Industrial Production (0.9% vs 0.3%) and Manufacturing Output (0.9% vs 0.2%) both exceeded consensus forecasts in May.
• Housing Starts (1.277mm) and Permits (1.386mm) both came in under consensus forecast for May, continuing the cooling trends seen of late.
• Existing Home Sales of 4.11mm were generally in line with expectations of 4.10mm, down slightly versus the prior month.
• The Housing Market Index softened slightly from 45 to 43 for the June reading.