“Wall Street’s main indexes were set to open higher on Thursday as beaten-down technology stocks posted slim gains in a roller-coaster week” Sruthi Shankar reports for Reuters. “Shares of Facebook, Netflix, Apple and Alphabet were up between 0.68 percent and 1.6 percent in premarket trading, with Amazon the only laggard among the FAANG stocks. The group is up 14 percent so far this year, but privacy concerns in the wake of Facebook’s scandal nearly two weeks back has wiped $400 billion off their value.”
“Economic data released on Thursday did little to change the expectations on interest rate hikes,” Shankar reports. “Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, excluding food and energy, rose 0.2 percent in February, after a 0.3 percent advance in January. Core PCE, the Federal Reserve’s favored gauge of inflation, rose 1.6 percent on an annualized basis, in line with economists’ expectations. Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, increased 0.2 percent last month after a similar gain in January.”
Shankar reports, “The tech-heavy Nasdaq’s slim 0.66 percent rise is keeping it on course for its seventh straight quarter of gains.”
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MacDailyNews Take: Onward and upward!
The market looks like it is in the process of topping which is not a singular event (one day) but a process that unfolds over time and is usually marked with high volatility.
Stocks are down if you look at the last 90 days. If there’s not a serious rally soon, then those that invest according to “fundamentals” are going to see a down trending line and will bail out for a bit… Which could mean a lower market over the upcoming months.