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May 1, 2025
Dow: 40,880
S&P: 5616
Nasdaq: 17,715
10-YR T-Note: 4.17%
Bitcoin: 96,137
VIX: 24.31
Gold: $3,226
Crude Oil: 58.60
Don Selkin, the creator and innovator of the "Fair Value" numbers, as its Chief Market Strategist on the Newbridge platform has given CNBC and its Predecessor, these numbers every day for the over 40 years - never missing a single day, as well as given the fair value for the Nasdaq 100 futures since their introduction in 1996 and the Dow Jones stock index futures since 1997. Mr. Selkin has also been quoted in several publications including but not limited to Bloomberg News, New York Post, Reuters, and The New York Times. Mr. Selkin's Fair Value numbers are included in the U.S.
Futures Report broadcast on CNBC every day before the market
opens attributing "Newbridge Securities" as the source. In addition, NSC provides to its professionals, their clients and the public access to Don Selkin's more in depth financial market views.
In another astounding session to end the wild month of April, the market reversed an awful start once again to finish mostly higher in one of the more bizarre very late panic moves.
For instance, the Dow was as low as a 784 point early downside thumping due to the publication of a negative first-quarter G.D.P. projection and a much lower jobs report from the usually discredited ADP report.
But from there it began to recover and after the Nervous Nellies got flushed out at the lows, it began to recover and by 3:40pm it was lower by 222. And then in the final minutes of the session, it went full steam ahead and ended with a closing gain of 141 to 40,619 helped by the likes of AMGN, SHW, IBM and MCD.
The S&P followed the same pattern with a 120 point early loss getting down to a 44 point decline at 3:35pm and from there is also exploded to the upside and ended 8 point up at 5519 led by gains in AAPL, NOW and TSMC. It ended higher for the seventh straight session in the process.
The Nasdaq also turned an early 500 point downside disaster into a final close of down 15 to 17,446 but the more technology weighed NDX finished higher.
The weaker Russell 2000 index of small stocks did nothing and ended down by 12 to 1964 while the VIX actually had the nerve to end with a gain up to 24.70.
It was another day of uncertainty about what the President’s trade war will do to the economy.
The early losses tumbled when the first report about current G.D.P came in lower by 0.3%, falling well short of economists’ expectations, in a sharp turnaround from the economy’s solid growth at the end of last year of 2.2%.
Importers rushed to bring products into the country before tariffs could raise their prices, while exports overseas really plummeted.
Such data raised the threat of a worst-case scenario “stagflation,” where the economy stagnates yet inflation remains high. Economists fear it because the Federal Reserve has no good tools to fix both problems at the same time. If the Fed were to try to help one problem by adjusting interest rates, it would likely make the other worse.
But some better news came later in the day when the P.C.E. report showed that inflation decelerated to 2.3%, closer to the Fed’s goal of 2%, from February’s reading of 2.7%. Stocks began paring their losses almost immediately after the report.
If inflation keeps trending lower, it will give the Fed more leeway to cut interest rates in order to juice the economy. Expectations are building for the Fed to cut its main interest rate by at least four times by the end of this year, according to data from CME Group, though it likely won’t begin at its next meeting next week.
The earnings calendar really starts to pick up with: yesterday - y - SNAP, SBUX,SMCI, OKE, EIX, DMCI, Dow component V lower and Dow component CAT in addition to STX, WTC,
BKNG higher; today – Dow component MSFT higher in addition to META, ZG, ANET, ALGN, CVS, HOOD, SHAK, W, RBLX but YUM, EBAY, QCOM, BDX, MELI, LLY, QGEN and Dow component MCD are lower; Tonight – Dow components AAPL and AMGN and MSTR.
Economic reports will show: yesterday - first look at 1Q estimate of G.D.P. unfortunately came in lower at negative -0.3%, March P.C.E. was unchanged as was the core rate excluding food and energy and up by 2.6% year over year, March pending home sales up by 6.1% and March personal income up by 0.5% and personal spending higher by 0.7%; today – weekly jobless claims jumped to 241,000, the highest in four years.
