EB Daily Market Report - Quick Recap - Wednesday, July 3, 2024

Tom Bowley - July 03, 2024

The U.S. stock market closed early today at 1pm ET, in observance of the July 4th holiday.

Our Live Trading Room was held today for more than 90 minutes and began at 10:00am ET. As a result, there wasn't much time to write a typical Daily Market Report. Instead, I thought it would be a good day for a brief recap. Here were a few interesting developments:

Futures were mixed with small caps showing the most pre-market strength
June ADP employment report showed jobs gaining less than expected, but May jobs were revised slightly higher; net, it was about even
Initial jobless claims again were reported above expectations, 238,000 vs. 233,000
May factory orders slowed considerably, falling well short of expectations; April orders were revised lower
As the day moved on, we saw solid outperformance from growth (IWF, +0.83%) vs. value (IWD, -0.02%) as the NASDAQ took over market leadership
Technology (XLK, +1.37%) led all sectors, mostly from renewed strength in both renewable energy ($DWCREE, +6.64%) and semiconductors ($DJUSSC, +3.32%)
Automobiles ($DJUSAU, +5.44%) had another huge day, with a big rally in Tesla (TSLA, +6.54%) lifting the group
The Fed indicated that they're not ready to cut rates until they're more confident that inflation is moving toward its 2% goal; is this really news?
Cryptocurrencies struggled again, with bitcoin ($BTCUSD, -3.19%) back to 60,000
In the end, new closing record highs were set on both the S&P 500 and NASDAQ

We'll be back with our next Daily Market Report on Friday.

We also want to wish everyone a happy and safe July 4th holiday!

Happy trading,

Tom