Dissecting the Stock Market Selloff

Last Edited by: LPL Research

Last Updated: April 23, 2024

market signals podcast image

Subscribe to the Market Signals podcast series on iTunesGoogle Podcasts, or Spotify and find us on the LPL Research YouTube channel.
 

Jeff Buchbinder:

<Silence> Hello everyone, and welcome to the latest LPL Market Signals podcast. Jeff Buchbinder here, back in the hosting saddle again this week after a week off. So thanks to Marc for covering for me. Please to be joined by Adam Turnquist this week. It is Monday, April 22, 2024, as we are recording this. Hi, how are you today, Adam?

Adam Turnquist:

I'm pretty good today. Happy to be here. I had the chainsaw out yesterday, so I'm all four limbs, no major scratches. What started off was my wife wanted a couple branches cut down. I was out there for about four hours clearing new trails and cutting new trees down. So I survived.

Jeff Buchbinder:

Dangerous stuff. Glad you're safe. I guess I did something dangerous too. I flew in an airplane a bunch of times last week, and thankfully no disruptions of any kind. Maybe, partly because some of those planes were Airbus planes, but glad to have smooth flights. I actually had the first flight in a while that I've been on where there were empty seats. So, you know, it was just, it was Boston and Chicago. I'm not going to draw any broad conclusions from that, but you know, perhaps the capacity has caught up a little bit and you know, we're not going to see just nothing but full flights every time. Who knows nonetheless, basically.

Adam Turnquist:

Made it through O'Hare unscathed I heard. No delays out there. So, congrats.

Jeff Buchbinder:

Yes, always try to avoid O'Hare connections, as I'm sure many of you listening do, made it smoothly. So that was definitely a win. So good to be back. Here's our agenda for today. Tech, you know, was a big loser last week, dragged the S&P 500 into pullback territory. Right as we're recording this, the S&P is about 5% below its record high, so it's barely a pullback, but it's a pullback, nonetheless. Of course, Adam, you're our chart guru. So we're going to do chart watch. I think you have six charts, might be off by one, but you're going to show us some charts that kind of help paint a picture for where this market might go from here. Next of course, we started earnings season last week. Well, it was, I guess it was the Friday before, but really got going last week.

Jeff Buchbinder:

And now this is a huge week for earnings, so we'll talk about some of the early takeaways. There's not much, frankly, to take away, but some of the perspective around the numbers is helpful. And then finally, we'll preview the week ahead as we always do GDP, PCE, inflation and earnings. So you know, starting with the recap of last week you know, I'll let you give us some technical insight on the chart, Adam, but I will just say it really looked like it was, you know, just two factors, right? It's rates rising as the market prices out Fed rate cuts, that was one and number two, the, of course, geopolitics and more in the Middle East. I didn't really see enough from earnings to say that was part of the story, but I think it's fair to say that when you have high valuations and you get some of these concerns, you know, you might drop a little bit more than you would otherwise. So, that's really high level, what I think was going on last week, maybe you would add to that list. But what are the charts, or at least this chart of the S&P telling us about maybe where we'll find our footing?

Adam Turnquist:

Yeah, so I think the market was overbought really looking for an excuse to maybe sell off and correct a little bit. And all the reasons you listed are certainly valid when you think about what's going on with earnings valuations, the geopolitical risk in the market, of course, and technically here you can see the S&P 500 violating its shorter term uptrend, that overlaps with that 20-day moving average. That was a key area of support that we were watching. If you look back over the last year, how many times buyers came in bought the dip, right around that 20-day moving average. So when supports no longer acting as it should, serves as kind of a warning sign for investors for a little bit of a deeper pullback. And that's what we witnessed last week, taking out support at the 50-day moving average.

Adam Turnquist:

Today, it looks like we're right around this key Fibonacci retracement level, right around 4,991. So keep an eye on that kind of 5,000 point area for support. We start breaking below there. I think, at least from a technical perspective, maybe this drawdown goes to right around 4,800. There's another retracement level there, also a longer-term uptrend. And then when you look at underneath the surface of the market, how oversold we are, when you get these pullbacks, I like to look at the percentage of stocks making new four-week lows. That's the bottom panel. It did go through 50% last week. So over half the S&P hitting new four-week lows. When you go back through history and look at that, it's usually a pretty good sign of washed out oversold conditions, often overlapping with a relief rally off those oversold conditions.

Adam Turnquist:

Also, seeing that in that middle panel with the relative strength index hitting close to oversold levels with a 35 reading. So we're watching that carefully as well. But for now, when you look at just the nature of this pullback, it does seem relatively orderly. The VIX spiked to, I think just, just above 21 last week. So no major moves in the VIX, at least from a historical context, and volumes relatively light considering the selling pressure. So for now, we're just watching support to see where we get a potential change in momentum for the S&P.

Jeff Buchbinder:

Yeah, good to see some green on the screens here today on Monday as we're recording this. So, you know, hopefully this will be the day we break this six-day losing streak and can you know, put up a positive week for the first time in four weeks. So here's the summary of performance last week for the equity side, you got the 3% drop in S&P 500, again, third straight down week. You have tech leading the way down, down 7.3%. NVIDIA was down 10% alone on Friday. So clearly that was a huge drag on the tech sector, and then in turn on the broad market. I guess the, you know, the good news here maybe is financials. I think most financials were up on Friday and financials ended up positive for the week. So that's certainly a sector to watch. And then energy, you'll talk about that, I know a little bit more here. We got a slide on it. Energy's, you know, wasn't a huge winner last week or anything, but it's actually shown that it can do pretty well here you know, even as the rest of the market pulls back. So, any observations about the you know, intra-market action last week, Adam?

Adam Turnquist:

Certainly a volatile week in terms of the intra-market action. I think when you look at just the sectors, you can see the tech sector down 7.3%, and that was three stocks were really behind that. At least 50% of that loss was attributable to the mega caps. Apple, Microsoft, NVIDIA, as you mentioned down significantly last week, but pretty broad-based selling across the board with some semblance of some safe haven demand coming into utilities. But we're not seeing a major leadership shift in the market, at least a sustainable one. So we'll take a look at that as we go through the presentation today.

Jeff Buchbinder:

Yeah, and it's certainly in looking at the international side, you had Japan a big loser, that's in yen. You have you know, I mean, if you factor in the strong dollar here, these international markets didn't really help you that much, but at least in local currency they did. So, you know, if you paint a scenario where international helps you, it's probably when big tech sells off. So maybe a little bit of a disappointment frankly, that you didn't get maybe even a little bit more help. You got some help from international, but it wasn't necessarily you know, enough to offset those losses in the U.S. Turning to the bonds and the commodity side, you had of course, losses in the bond market. Again, the big reason, or one of the big reasons we sold off last week was the backup in rates around the Fed.

Jeff Buchbinder:

You know, we're now looking at possibly not even two rate cuts this year after the hot inflation data recently. So you got some losses, understandably, in the bond market. Commodities I thought was interesting. I actually just priced this this morning. The dispersion between industrial metals and precious metals is about as big as you'll see. Industrial metals up four and precious metals down two. So, you know, copper was up over four. So I know you follow the commodity markets pretty closely, Adam, you know, any thoughts on those moves? Is that telling us anything about the economy or where the markets may go next?

Adam Turnquist:

I would like to say it's all about the economy and demand, but I think part of that industrial metal story relates to supply. We had new sanctions come in across Russian imports for some of those industrial metals. And then when you turn to China and copper, they produce a lot of the refined copper in the world, I think right around at least over 50% of it. And they're now, some of the smelters over there are talking about production cuts, so that's weighing on the supply side. But I do think you can attribute it to some of improving demand when you look at what's going on at globally. The other big story was just the whipsaw we witnessed in some of the other commodities like crude oil and gold. Originally when we had the headlines about Israel striking Iran on Thursday night and a retaliatory attack, that both of those moved significantly higher with WTI trading as high as 86 and change, gold hitting new intraday highs. By the morning, all of those gains had reversed as it looked like cooler heads prevailed, and at this point, it doesn't seem like Iran's going to retaliate. And maybe that's those geopolitical tensions, at least for now, are simmering a little bit.

Jeff Buchbinder:

Yeah, certainly a very strategic and narrow response from Israel, which may be at least the, you know, geopolitical strategist that I've read. Looks like it was sending a message that, you know, Israel wanted to deescalate, and it seems like Iran has every reason to deescalate at this point as well. So, so yeah, dramatic moves in commodities up then down <laugh>, I guess depending on which one you're looking at. So I guess last thing on this page is you got the dollar up 5%, or almost 5% year to date. That is a big move. So clearly the dollar's getting safe haven flows and you know, is going to be a drag on international earnings generated by U.S. multinational companies, and it tightens financial conditions a little bit. They're still, you know, relatively loose. But that's certainly something we'll have to have to watch. And is one of your charts for this week, Adam. So, let's get into your chart watch. There's a lot of good stuff in here. You know, we kind of led with the Fed cuts unwinding. So why don't we start there and I'll let you run through these.

Adam Turnquist:

So when we walk through this chart, it's highlighting the number of Fed rate cuts priced in. This is by December of 2024. And if you zoom to the beginning of the year, that January kind of timeframe, on the left side of that chart, you can see the market pricing in anywhere from six to seven rate cuts by year end. If you flash back, the narrative back when we started the year was this Goldilocks economy where inflation is not too hot, growth is not too cool, and it's that proverbial porridge that's just right. And the expectations did not prove to be, at least for now, accurate with the market re-rating significantly in terms of those rate cut expectations. Now we're talking one, maybe two rate cuts for this year, but I think it's important to step back and realize why that change in the narrative has occurred.

Adam Turnquist:

And it's really been resilient U.S. economic data, notably the jobs market, and then I think a little less confidence in the Fed with their fight against inflation. We've had three straight months of hotter-than-expected consumer inflation that's weighing on the outlook, but I think the growth narrative is important to think about as well, when we're looking at whether that's interest rates or the economy or the stocks. But for now, that Wall Street narrative has changed from Goldilocks to the higher for longer narrative, and we highlighted that in our Weekly Market Commentary this week, and some of the implications for that.

Jeff Buchbinder:

Yep. You can find the weekly on lpl.com. I mean, I get, I think the question people are asking is, you know, could we actually get a hike now? Could this, you know, recent short trend and, you know, worse inflation data, end up wiping out all the cuts for this year, right? That's, I mean, that's a hard question to answer, but clearly the market has braced for this. You know, when you go from six to one and a half, you're, I think, you know, a lot of traders are probably sort of, I don't know, I don't want to say immune, but they're braced for another move higher, right, in fed funds. So, you know, I could be wrong in this, but my sense is that when we, if we get another one, we unwind another cut, that the reaction won't be as dramatic as what we just saw with this, you know, quick you know, three to 5% pullback. So, you know, again, hard to predict, but we'll be watching that. So you know what matters, probably more the, well, definitely more of the economy is actual borrowing rates, right? Rather than fed funds. But fed funds drive borrowing rates, certainly. So this is the 10-year, Adam, where do you think this is going now that we've broken out?

Adam Turnquist:

Yeah, the trend here is higher. We just broke out above a key resistance level, right around 4.35. You can see that on the red bar that goes across horizontally. That goes back to the October 2022 highs. There's a key retracement level in that area as well. But you can see after a few tries, we did break through that to the upside. So it does suggest risk is to the upside, surprises in the market when you're above the 200-day moving average tend to happen to the upside, that's the technical assumption as well. So maybe you get close to retesting those prior highs at 5%. There's some resistance levels along the way, notably 4.73, 4.88, are a couple levels that we're watching. But for now, the trend is higher. You can see we've got confirmation of that with the 50-day crossing back above the 200-day moving average.

Adam Turnquist:

We call that a golden cross. I like to use those more as confirmation than a trading signal. But what's surprising when you look at the correlation between 10-year yields and the S&P 500 now verse for example, last summer when we last broke out above 4.35, they're almost even, we'll call it, we're still negative, but not by anywhere near where we were last summer. That was a pretty big tipping point for risk appetite. If you go back to July of 2023, when rates moved too high, too fast, equity sold off, and we had about a 10% correction going into October. Right now, you can see on that bottom panel where the correlation is near that zero line, I think that's suggesting maybe the market is expecting the economy to hold up a little bit better than the last time we were at this point, and being able to absorb higher rates just given some of the economic data.

Jeff Buchbinder:

Yeah, this time is not as much of a surprise. The dramatic move, you know, last year from, or even two years ago, from expecting inflation to be transitory, right? And not worried about it at all, and having rates, you know, at one, 2% and thinking, oh, maybe we'll go to three, right? To then surprise we're at five. That was really dramatic, just a major, major change. I'm not saying this move we've had just now is not major, but it's again, the, you know, market's more braced for it. It's a little bit, it was a little bit more anticipated that you would, you know, maybe go from four cuts to two or potentially, I mean, we've had, even Bostic was saying only one from the Fed, right? Several months back. So this is not a new story. And it's just not as dramatic of a move as what we experienced a couple years ago when we had that, you know, or I guess a year ago when we had the surprising move to 5%. I guess, you know, not only does it move to a 10-year yield of five give you good returns on bonds for new money, right?

Jeff Buchbinder:

That's the upside, but it also supports the dollar, right? You have safe haven flows helping support the dollar, but you also have you know, a higher yield attracting flows into the U.S., bond flows in particular. I know bond flows have been pretty strong here lately. So you know, it looks like the next move for the dollar is up to the, at least fundamentally. Do the technicals say the same thing, Adam?

Adam Turnquist:

Technicals say the same thing, very similar to yields, dollar following yields higher. And it looks like we're setting up for a retest of the 2023 highs, not too far from current levels. I think the resistance level to watch there, 107.35, if we start breaking above that, that's going to be technically significant. And raise the question, are we going to go back and potentially move toward those 2022 highs? So some material upside risk if we start breaking above those 2023 highs. Now, this creates problems for multinational or U.S. multinationals, as you mentioned. I think depends on where you get your stats. I read from I think the S&P that around 30% of S&P 500 companies get their revenue from abroad. So as those get repatriated back to the U.S. that weighs on earnings. But you're also seeing this show up in central bank commentary, creating a headache for them as they try to stabilize their currency.

Adam Turnquist:

Notably, the Bank of Japan that's now through an important threshold, or the yen is through an important threshold against the dollar through this 152 level. So the market's now speculating there could be some intervention, or potentially they raise rates sooner than later to combat that weaker yen. Same thing in China with yuan, they're struggling to maintain their currency and some stability there, but they're both export-driven economies. So I think it helps them there. But any type of the market sniffing out currency destabilization is a risk for the market, and what that could mean if the dollar continues higher.

Jeff Buchbinder:

Yeah, it's certainly something to watch. It affects a lot of things in different ways. So we'll watch the dollar, hopefully it hits that resistance and moves lower. So this is a breadth reading, Adam, that you threw in here. You, you know, I guess the question is, was the breadth good enough during this recent pullback to tell us that, you know, this market can bounce here?

Adam Turnquist:

I think so when you look at, just on the far right, you can see over 70% of S&P 500 stocks still above their long-term, 200-day moving average. I think that is a good sign. I like to use kind of the 50% threshold as bullish or bearish. So when at least half the index is above their 200-day historically, and statistically, that's usually a pretty good sign for the market. And then when you look at the composition of breadth, so when you break it down by sector as we're doing here, you want to see where the leadership is and where participation is, and it's still cyclical, and that's a really important message. You look at financials leading the way, you have nearly 90% of financial stocks above their 200-day moving average. Also, areas like industrials and materials are doing quite well. I'm watching to see how staples and utilities and even real estate start to perform if there is more of a risk off flight to safety to see if any, if they start participating more and exhibit greater breadth. But for now, it's still offense over defense, it looks like technically.

Jeff Buchbinder:

Yeah, utilities have been sort of sneaky good lately. So that'll be one to watch. There's a little bit of offense in there with power demand from AI and data centers. It's not entirely defensive. Same with real estate. <Laugh> real estate is sort of a mix of offense and defense. But utilities will be interesting to watch and they can be a signal of where rates are going. So, I know we've showed this before, Adam, when you've been on the you know, the relationship between consumer discretionary and consumer staples, you use that as a signal of you know, preference for cyclicals versus defensive. So you know, is this broken down enough to be worrisome or are we still in this uptrend here,

Adam Turnquist:

We're still in the uptrend fortunately, but it is being tested as you can see here. And when this ratio chart is rising, that means the equal weight consumer discretionary is outperforming the equal weight staple sector. So more of a risk on backdrop. And that's what we've seen really for the last year and a half. You can see how this bottomed and has been in this uptrend really since late December of 2022. Well, now this pullback we witnessed over the last couple weeks, and the market has brought this ratio chart right to an inflection point, retesting that uptrend along with the 200-day moving average. So I'm going to call this kind of make or break for that leadership. If we start seeing this breakdown further, you have to question what's leading the market? Is this really a shift to a risk off, more defensive leadership for now? The trend is up, but we'll be watching this one carefully.

Jeff Buchbinder:

Yeah. And good to look at equal weight so you don't end up with distortions from Tesla, Amazon, or even Walmart on the other side. So really, really good one to follow there. It's a nice pattern. I mean, you're the chart guru, but tells me buy the dip, it looks like a lot of investors and traders agree buying the dip today. So you know, next energy I mentioned you threw a chart in of energy. I think your headline here is really interesting. You know, it hasn't been correlated to, in other words, hasn't been hurt by rising 10-year Treasury yields. But you've got a couple other data points on here that you think are worth highlighting.

Adam Turnquist:

Yeah, and speaking of pullback opportunities, this one looks like one in energy. You can see we had this breakout through the 2022 highs, and you can probably lose count how many tries it took energy to finally break out to new highs. We did get that earlier in March and things got a little bit overbought simplistically. We've now pulled back to support from that prior breakout level right around the 20-day moving average. Oftentimes these are pullbacks that you want to buy if you miss that initial rally. And then when you start breaking it down in terms of relative performance in that middle panel, we compare the sector versus the S&P 500. It has started to outperform, call it since February, March timeframe, getting back above its 200-day moving average. So it does suggest we're going to see energy outperformance ahead. And then on the bottom panel, we like to look at participation and how many stocks are actually rallying along with the sector. And you can see overall breadth very high with 83% of this sector above their 200-day moving average. And you also had nearly half of the energy sector putting up new 52-week highs on the breakout. So that's suggesting broad participation is really powering this rally, and it is more of a sustainable breakout, so a dip you likely want to buy. And as a reminder, we do like energy from our Strategic and Tactical Asset Allocation Committee.

Jeff Buchbinder:

Yeah, it's not just a play on oil prices or gas prices, frankly, companies have been better stewards of capital, you know, more disciplined with projects, returning more capital to shareholders. You've got some pretty nice dividend yields in, at least in the majors. So and valuations are attractive. So a lot of reasons to think energy can do well here, even if oil stays you know, range bound as the geopolitical tensions potentially abate further, we hope. So, thanks for the walkthrough charts, Adam. A lot of good stuff there. I'd say the overarching message is pretty encouraging that, you know, odds favor more of a buy the dip rather than some bigger sell off here into a correction. We'll obviously as always, watch the data and nobody has a crystal ball, but things are, you know, looking more positive than negative here,

Jeff Buchbinder:

we would say. So let's turn to earnings. Something else that, you know, maybe looks a little more positive than negative as we look forward. But you know, to date it's been a mixed story. The you know, the, if you just look at the growth rate that's expected for Q1, it's come down. But when you dig into where that's coming from, interestingly, it's mostly from two companies. In healthcare we had Gilead and Bristol Myers Squibb do acquisitions and roll up losses for the acquired companies. So they saw the analyst took their estimates way down to incorporate those acquired losses that weren't previously part of the S&P 500. And you're talking about a couple points just from that alone. So that really took us from, I'm just using round numbers from four to, you know, high ones.

Jeff Buchbinder:

And then, so now we're tracking to up one instead of up four. The other piece is actually kind of spread out. I looked at a, you know, all the sector estimate revisions and you got a little bit from tech coming out, a little bit from industrials, a little bit from materials, little bit from consumer discretionary. It's nothing really dramatic. The biggest chunk is that healthcare piece. So, you know, that's obviously not recurring. So it doesn't, it's not enough to say that this earnings season's off to a bad start. So, I call it mixed. Now, the best reason to call it mixed rather than bad or soft is the what's happened with the estimates. The estimates for S&P 500 earnings over the next four quarters have actually gone up over the last couple of weeks. Which is you know, probably surprising to some of you because the stock market hasn't done well, obviously during that period.

Jeff Buchbinder:

What that means is stocks have just gotten a little bit cheaper, so this actually points more to buy the dip then exacerbate the sell off. So that's a real positive. Now it's early, it's 72 S&P 500 companies that have reported and that's it. We get more than double that this week with about 160 S&P 500 companies reporting. So, you know, take this a little bit with a grain of salt, but, you know, I'll say a pretty good, pretty good start so far. Adam, any anything stand out to you so far in earnings? I know it's mostly been financial so far. Anything

Adam Turnquist:

<Crosstalk>? No, I'm glad you walked through the EPS growth because I was trying to figure out why it dropped. I haven't, you know, as a technician, I'm not day-to-day looking at growth rates. And one week it was much higher and I am glad you explained that. So some good color there, but it's going to be a busy week of earnings and with some of the mega caps. So it should be interesting to see how that all plays out with a relatively busy economic calendar ahead.

Jeff Buchbinder:

Yes, absolutely. Good segue. We're both learning on this Monday, because I didn't realize that the big techs were half of the decline last week. <Laugh> in terms of contributions, I don't always look at individual stock contributions to total. But that's something good certainly to know. So let's look at the weekly calendar here. It's really, I think all about the PCE deflator, the Fed's preferred inflation measure. And, and frankly you know, maybe make or break is too strong, but the market really needs an inline number here. And I think you're going to see a nice sigh of relief if we get one. The consensus is for 0.3% month over month for the headline and for the core reading, the core of course being more important to the Fed.

Jeff Buchbinder:

And then the year over year on the core 2.7. So lower than the CPI, largely because of the whole, the different way that real estate is figured in. So that's the key number of the week. That is on Friday morning, 8:30 Eastern time. I don't know that the GDP report's going to be market moving, but it always gets a lot of headlines just because it's representative of the whole economy, right? It's the best read on, I guess overall economic growth that we get quarter to quarter. So two and a half percent is consensus. I don't really have a feel for where that'll be, up or down, but I think we've been kind of in a string of beating expectations for the last several quarters. So maybe that's the way to lean. Any thoughts on those data points, Adam, or any others that are on here?

Adam Turnquist:

No, I think you nailed it. It's drum roll into Friday morning for that PCE report and it's going to be a major one given what we're coming into with the CPI and some of the other inflation reports ahead of this.

Jeff Buchbinder:

Yeah, a hundred percent. And, you know, a lot of the move in bond yields is more growth oriented than inflation driven, right? So you know, hopefully we won't get too much growth <laugh> that could drive yields up through that 5% level on the 10-year. But so, you know, something around two and a half would be nice, maybe even a little bit higher than that, but I think that the potential for PCE, the inflation data to move markets is much higher. So we'll be watching that one really closely. And we've also got to watch the Treasury auctions this week. I think we get, I want to say 170 is it 170 billion something in that range? It's a huge number for Treasury auctions this week. So we'll watch those as well. And that could move Treasury yields around, you know, in addition to the economic data.

Jeff Buchbinder:

And again, we'll watch earnings closely and we start to broaden out a little bit beyond the financials, of course. So I think we'll have more interesting takeaways for you on earnings next week. And we get some big techs this week, which of course we'll all be paying attention to. The big techs are pretty much all the earnings growth we're going to get. So, you know, if consensus right now plus a little upside gets you to five or 6% earnings growth for the overall S&P, then that's all going to come, most likely, from just big tech and not even the Magnificent Seven. You only need five <laugh>, right? The five. So exclude Apple, exclude Tesla, the other five Mag Seven names alone are expected to drive five points of S&P 500 earnings growth, which is really remarkable when you think about it. So we get Alphabet this week, we get Microsoft this week and we get let's see, what's the other one? We get Amazon this week. I know Apple, oh and Tesla this week. Yeah, I know we get Apple next week. And NVIDIA's not for another what month? For another,

Adam Turnquist:

Yeah, a few more weeks.

Jeff Buchbinder:

So, it's a big earnings week once you start getting the big techs, you know, you're really in the sweet spot for whether it's going to be, you know, a good season or not. So that is all I got. Anything else on your mind here to close us out, Adam?

Adam Turnquist:

Nothing much. Just continue to watch the tape here and see where support lands, if we get any type of relief rally on the technicals.

Jeff Buchbinder:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, hopefully we can get a five handle on this S&P and stay there. But certainly, you know, we're more inclined to hold our neutral equity asset allocation recommendation here rather than sell after the weakness. Frankly, we're probably closer to buying the dip than selling the rip. So thanks for that, Adam, for you know, a great walk through all those charts that hopefully gave all of you a good sense of where we're at. I think this is one of those markets where you really have to peel back the onion, as I like to say, to learn about what's going on. Because there's a lot of, I use this term, which I think I got from Liz Ann Sonders, at Schwab, the duck market, right?

Jeff Buchbinder:

It looks calm on the surface sometimes, but underneath there's furious paddling <laugh>, right? So you know, we're up 4% for the year, but boy, there's a lot of dispersion, right? And there's a lot going on under the surface. So we'll keep digging into the numbers for you and figure out what's going on when sometimes just the main headline of where the S&P's going is not quite enough. So thanks Adam for helping me and helping everybody else, all of our listeners understand that. So with that, thanks everybody for joining. Thanks as always for your support of LPL Market Signals, and we'll be back with you next week. Take care, everybody.

In the latest LPL Market Signals podcast, LPL strategists recap the third straight down week for the S&P 500, walk through some charts to help provide context for the selloff, provide early earnings season takeaways, and preview the week’s economic calendar.

Stocks fell sharply last week due primarily to the further unwinding of Federal Reserve rate cut expectations and fears of a wider conflict in the Middle East. The bulk of the losses were concentrated in the technology sector.

The strategists highlight several key charts outlining the shift toward a higher-for-longer monetary policy backdrop. They note the impact reduced rate cut expectations have had on Treasury yields and how the recent advance has been less shocking to stock investors compared to last year. The analysts further discuss key technical levels for the S&P 500, how oversold conditions could signal a relief rally may be forthcoming, and why the energy sector remains attractive.

Next, the strategists discuss some early takeaways from a mixed start to first quarter earnings season. The good news: Estimates for future quarters have inched higher. However, that good news has been masked by acquisition-related losses from healthcare companies that have dragged the first quarter estimate down.

Finally, the strategists preview a busy weekly economic calendar featuring the first look at first quarter GDP (consensus forecast: +2.5%) on Thursday, followed by Friday’s release of the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation metric, the core PCE deflator (consensus forecast: +0.3% month over month, +2.7% year over year). 

You may also be interested in:

IMPORTANT DISCLOSURES

This material is for general information only and is not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. There is no assurance that the views or strategies discussed are suitable for all investors or will yield positive outcomes. Investing involves risks including possible loss of principal. Any economic forecasts set forth in the podcast may not develop as predicted and are subject to change.

References to markets, asset classes, and sectors are generally regarding the corresponding market index. All indexes are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly. Index performance is not indicative of the performance of any investment and do not reflect fees, expenses, or sales charges. All performance referenced is historical and is no guarantee of future results.

Stock investing includes risks, including fluctuating prices and loss of principal. Bonds are subject to market and interest rate risk if sold prior to maturity. Bond values will decline as interest rates rise and bonds are subject to availability and change in price.

High yield/junk bonds (grade BB or below) are not investment grade securities, and are subject to higher interest rate, credit, and liquidity risks than those graded BBB and above. They generally should be part of a diversified portfolio for sophisticated investors.

Any company names noted herein are for educational purposes only and not an indication of trading intent or a solicitation of their products or services. LPL Financial doesn’t provide research on individual equities. All information is believed to be from reliable sources; however, LPL Financial makes no representation as to its completeness or accuracy.

The Standard and Poor's 500, or simply the S&P 500, is a stock market index tracking the performance of 500 large companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States.

The Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index, or the Agg, is a broad base, market capitalization-weighted bond market index representing intermediate term investment grade bonds traded in the United States.

All index data is from FactSet.

All information is believed to be from reliable sources; however, LPL Financial makes no representation as to its completeness or accuracy.

This Research material was prepared by LPL Financial, LLC. 

Member FINRA/SIPC

For Public Use — Tracking # 569176