Buybacks are Back
Sources: The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg
S&P 500 companies continue to outpace earnings expectations, but not quite as much on the sales side.
But now we are seeing these expectations rise, so the quarters ahead may become a bit more challenging as we may see earnings growth slowing at the same time. Source: Bloomberg, Markets & Mayhem
In most cases, market breadth leads price. NYSE, S&P 500, and Midcap advance/decline lines all made new all-time highs last week.
Small caps are on the verge of new 52-wk highs. Some support for a potential summer rally? Source: Ryan Detrick
"Power Up America" theme is Goldman's top performing basket year-to-date w/+37.5% driven by global data centers' eye-popping demand for power.
17 of the 22 companies from the basket that have reported earnings have beat estimates by an average of +29%. Source: HolgerZ, Bloomberg
Retail investors have bought over $5 billion of leveraged equity ETFs in the last 12 months, the most since 2022.
This marks a $3 billion increase on a 1-month rolling sum basis in just a few months. Since the October 2023 low, retail investors have been piling into leveraged ETFs. However, a similar pattern was seen in 2021 and early 2022 after which retail experienced significant losses. The average retail investor portfolio drawdown from the 2022 peak was 35% and took 1.5 years to recover. Retail risk appetite is near record highs. Source: FT, The Kobeissi Letter
Who needs Mag 7 if one can buy utilities stocks?
Source: Michel A.Arouet
8 of the 10 biggest winning stocks in 2020 have lost value since the end of that year including Tesla $TSLA
Source: Barchart, FT
Believe it or not, utilities $XLU is now the best performing SP500 ETFsince the start of the year (+13.4%).
Technology $XLV is in the second half of the ranking (+5.4%). So what's going on? Utilities has been on a run as we are reaching the 2nd derivative of the AI trade. Investment bankers are pushing new AI baskets and many of them include some Utilities stocks. Source: Mike Zaccardi
