Good Morning,
Happy Columbus Day! Remember, today is a federally recognized holiday meaning there will be no mail and banks will be closed. The stock market will be open normal hours!
It was a fascinating week in the markets last week with record highs reached on Wednesday followed by a selloff on Friday. The selloff was in response to tariff comments made by President Trump towards China after their recent export controls on rare earth metals. Markets today opened sharply higher after a more optimistic tone from President Trump on Sunday. Regardless the reason, I do think a more sustained pullback would be healthy for this market in the long-run. One of the big themes for 2025 has been AI spend and the potential winners in this space. OpenAI, the company that developed ChatGPT, struck a multiyear partnership with Broadcom today which follows similar deals with Nvidia, Oracle and AMD. Time will ultimately tell how this massive push towards AI will reflect on corporate bottom lines but for now, the capital spent continues to spur the economy. With the government remaining shutdown, key inflation reports originally scheduled for release this week will be postponed. This leaves Q3 earnings as a large catalyst for stocks with the big banks reporting tomorrow. I remain optimistic with this market as we will likely see rates continue to come down over the duration of the year paired with an economy that remains strong. That being said, I do continue to favor more value given the run-up we have seen of late. Please continue to reach out with additional questions.
Attached, please find this week’s Market Strategy Radar Screen Report from John Stoltzfus, Chief Investment Strategist of Oppenheimer Asset Management.
Have a great week!