Shesa's Investment Blog

What’s happening in the Stock Market - Weekly Update On Wednesday, 7/5, the FOMC statement was released which said “Given the continued strength in labor market conditions and consumer spending, however, FED sees the possibility of the economy continuing to grow slowly and avoiding a downturn as almost as likely as the mild-recession. I don’t think we may see any recession, at least not in the near future. On Thursday, 7/6, ADP reported 497,000 private jobs were added for the month of June, well ahead of estimated 228,000 by Wall Street. It can be noted that in May also we saw big job growth of 267,000 bs. 220K. For the Wall Street, the bad thing could be that huge job growth but the good news is “wage growth is slowing”. On Friday, the labor department released the unemployment Job report where payrolls increased 209,000 in June, below the consensus estimate for 240,000. The unemployment rate was 3.6%, down 0.1%. Wages increased 4.4% from a year ago, slightly higher than economis...

By Shesa Nayak U.S. Stock Market Commentary   It has been a phenomenal year for a selected group of technology stocks so far. NASDAQ continued its staggering run and up 31.7% recording the best first half for the index since 1983, 40 years . The S&P 500 is up 15.9% for its best first half since 2019. As such, this year has been exciting for Nasdaq, particularly for certain group of stocks. The top 20 Nasdaq stocks accounted for most of the gain in first few months. Artificial Intelligence ( A.I. ) related stocks and semiconductor sector have been the biggest beneficiaries.  Both Nasdaq and S&P have hit 13 months high. Last week, we saw little bit pullback but in my view that’s very healthy for a long term bull market. Because it gives opportunity for the investors to take little profit and coincidently bring new money to the market from the investors sitting on the sidelines.  The federal reserve paused its rate hike in June but later Fed Chair Jerome Powel...