NYSE Mac Desk - October 28 Weekly Recap

It was an impressive week for US equity markets. The S&P 500 closed higher for the second consecutive week bring the two week tally to over 8%, the largest two-week gain since the 2020 elections. This week was all about the collision of the macro backdrop and the tidal wave of earnings announcements. On the macro front, the headwinds that equity markets have been fighting throughout most of this year, surging yields and the USD, offered some reprieve this week extending the move from last Friday following the Nick Timiraos's WSJ article and comments from SF Fed President Mary Daly which suggested there could be more of a debate brewing at the Fed about the path of policy going forward. This coupled with a few other  recent data points is once stoking hopes that the Fed will downshift the pace of rate increases in the coming months.

The other big story this week has been earnings. The headlines were all focused on the earnings related to the mega-cap tech stocks which make up such a heavy weighting within the S&P 500. Broadly speaking the numbers from these stocks were not particularly good with only one good Apple in the bunch. However, markets were able to shrug this off due in part to the fact the earnings more broadly have been coming in better than feared. In fact if you look at the results from the other companies that round out the top 20 largest market capitalizations in the S&P 500 that have already reported, they have been good pretty much across the board (in mkt cap order of those having reported - UNH, JNJ, XOM, JPM, CVX, V, PG, MA, BAC).

Read the rest of the Weekly Recap here.