Markets Shrug Off Hawkish Fed with Another Strong Week

Last Edited by: LPL Research

Last Updated: June 20, 2023

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Jeff Buchbinder (00:00):

Hello everyone, and welcome to the latest LPL Market Signals podcast. Jeff Buchbinder here with my friend and colleague, Adam Turnquist. Adam, how are you today?

Adam Turnquist (00:10):

Hey, good. Thanks for having me on today.

Jeff Buchbinder (00:14):

Absolutely. Thanks for joining. We're of course going to talk a little bit of technicals because that is your specialty. But you know, it looks like the market likes the fundamentals here as well. It's not just you know, momentum and breadth. I mean, we're seeing some fundamental stories that seem to be getting the market excited here too. So, we'll talk about that for you here. Here's the agenda for this week. We've got of course a strong market rally to talk about. The Fed was quite hawkish, but it didn't matter, market shrugged it off and kept on going. We'll talk about the key Fed takeaways. Divergence is really, I think, the best word to capture it. And what I mean by that is the market is going a different direction from the Fed <laugh> and essentially not buying what the Fed is selling.

Jeff Buchbinder (01:06):

Next we'll look at some charts here that Adam brought to us that are quite interesting, especially the tech charts. We'll talk a little bit of tech sector, which is certainly all the rage these days. And then finally preview next week's economic calendar, which thankfully is very quiet because boy, we had a lot of data in central bank meetings packed into this week. So, it is Friday, June 16, 2023, as we're recording this, right around the close. So as many of you are listening to this, you have already celebrated not only Father's Day, but the Juneteenth holiday. So, hope everybody had a nice holiday weekend. So, let's get into it and talk about markets last week. So really strong, really strong gains. Because we're recording this right at the close, we don't know if we're going to be positive.

Jeff Buchbinder (02:04):

We're kind of right around the flat line for Friday. But the S&P could be up seven straight days. The you know, we talked a lot about the bull market, Adam, and how it was up 20% off the lows. Well forget 20, we're up 25 off the lows already. Seems like we just finished celebrating that 20%. And just added about five to it. I think the, you know, the first thing I would point out here is that the Fed was very hawkish and markets went higher anyway, so, you know, what do you think the market was seeing to in essence celebrate the Fed's hawkish message?

Adam Turnquist (02:42):

Yeah, I don't know if it's a celebration or just a fear of missing out rally that's starting to build after the market's starting to surpass several of these key areas of overhead resistance, but certainly risk on for the last several weeks. Looks like the S&P 500's going to wrap up this week with its fifth straight winning streak. That's the longest since November 2021, and we've seen it broadened out a little bit too, in terms of buying pressure. You know, for this week it looks like 80% of S&P 500 stocks are going to close higher. So pretty broad based, and it's becoming a little bit more cyclical oriented as well, starting to see financials and industrials, even a little bit of energy participation in this last in over the last few weeks. But in terms of terms of the Fed, I think there was, you know, it's hard to say exactly because that if I listen to the Fed commentary in Jerome Powell's speech, I certainly would've guessed the market traded lower after just listening to some of the commentary there. But I think the market's still gravitating toward this idea that the end is near with the rate hike cycle. They're a bit complacent maybe with this higher for longer messaging from the Fed. But I think just having a little bit more visibility in terms of when the end is coming is certainly helping with risk sentiment.

Jeff Buchbinder (04:04):

Yeah, I think the market just recognizes that the Fed doesn't have a ton of credibility, and so we'll actually show you evidence of that here in a bit. But you know, the market's locked in on its view that the end of the hiking cycle is near. It's probably July. It could be here already. And you know, with inflation making continued progress coming down, we've got the CPI and the PPI inflation reports this week, which were fine. And you know, the soft-landing odds maybe are inching a little bit higher, even though our base case in LPL Research is still for a mild and short recession sometime over the next, call it six to nine months. So you know, we mentioned the, you know, the strong rally in the U.S. this week, you know, roughly 3%.

Jeff Buchbinder (04:54):

We also have gains pretty much across the board globally. Japan really jumps out, you know, the BOJ, the Bank of Japan gave us what we expected, which is no change to their very accommodative policy. Those charts I know look really good in Japan, Adam. So, I think that's one to call out an area that we like. We continue to like developed international equities even a little bit better than the U.S. right here, although we're neutral overall on equities as we talked about here last week. Turning to the sectors you mentioned, you know, a little more economic sensitivity in the makeup of the sector rankings. I mean, tech, you got to call out. I mean, not only do we have you know, the big guys do well, right? You know, Microsoft, Apple NVIDIA, but you also had Oracle joining the party recently after their strong results. Adobe, right?

Jeff Buchbinder (05:48):

You've had a number of stocks make moves in tech on fundamentals not just momentum or because people think they're artificial intelligence plays. So tech continues to roll and you're also getting pretty good numbers from consumer discretionary, actually consumer discretionary, I think we mentioned this last week. Tesla and Amazon are of course, huge pieces of that sector. Tesla shares are actually up 14 out of 16 days. So certainly, you know, you look at this row of consumer discretionary returns, that is a big part of why that area has been strong lately as well. We're still a little bit wary of consumer discretionary as there is a potential for recession in the not too distant future which would certainly weigh on consumer spending. But for now, the momentum there is pretty strong.

Jeff Buchbinder (06:40):

Turning to fixed income markets, you know, we kind of had a little bit of an up move not huge, but a little bit of an up move in the bond markets as rates came down a little bit after the Fed. As we've learned from Lawrence Gillum, our chief fixed income strategist, at the end of Fed rate hiking campaigns, you tend to see interest rates move lower. Maybe we're starting to see a little bit of that here. And then on the commodity side, you know, energy, we watch more closely probably than anything here. Natural gas had a big run last week, but oil really didn't do a whole lot. Anything you want to highlight here, Adam, on the commodity side?

Adam Turnquist (07:21):

Yeah, it's interesting to see commodities finally catching a little bit of a bid this week. I think some of that's been driven by speculation of further fiscal stimulus from China. That's been the big story in the commodity landscape, helping support oil prices this week with WTI trading higher. But yeah, natural gas was another big one. You know, it was oversold near this kind of $2 support level, and we're starting to see higher lows developed there. Looks like most of the sellers have left natural gas after its precipitous fall last year. But again, I think the supply side there kind of limits the sustainability of a major rally in nat gas, but certainly can see some of that China influence as well in industrial metals up, you know, around 3% on the week as well. So, starting to see a bid come into some of those, they've been kind of on the back burner waiting for more evidence of that reopening theme in China to play out.

Jeff Buchbinder (08:17):

Yeah, good point there. Also note, you know, grains have had a move on some dry weather and, you know, potentially a play on the El Nino weather patterns. We'll see what happens there, but I mean, I looked at a long-term chart of grains and it's just pretty much an escalator down <laugh>, so, which is good, right? That's consistent with lower inflation and that's what we want. So here's the S&P 500. I mean, it's just incredible move here. I mean, I think the question everybody's asking is of course, is how much further could this go? And you know, are we too overbought? So, what's your take, Adam?

Adam Turnquist (08:56):

Yeah, so we finally cleared the August highs. I don't know if I should say finally, it didn't take long. We gapped above the August highs, actually just over the last week. So now we're looking at the next major area of overhead resistance kind of around this 4,600 range that goes back to the February highs at 4,589, and then the March 22 highs, so call it 4,600 is again the next major spot, that 4,300 level associated with the August highs that now becomes support. But keep in mind, we're pretty well extended above the uptrend, above the 50-day moving average. We're actually almost three standard deviations above the 50-day moving average, just the S&P's premium above that moving average. So that's the most overbought the market's been since November of 2004. And if you look at relative strength, the relative strength index in the middle panel or RSI, that's also overbought along with a lot of the S&P 500. Right now you have about 14% of S&P 500 stocks entering overbought territory. So overbought does not mean over, and you certainly want to see overbought conditions in a bull market, that helps provide validation. But if you're thinking tactically, you're trying to identify, you know, probabilities of when you could see a pause or a pullback, and we're certainly seeing technical evidence build for that scenario playing out at least on a near term horizon.

Jeff Buchbinder (10:25):

Yeah, feels like a little bit of a pullback is coming soon. You know, we'll see what happens around the quarter end where you tend to get a lot of performance chasing. So you know, we talked a lot last week and I think even the week before about the new bull market. I think Adam, somebody did not get the memo because in my town of Needham, Massachusetts, we have had a black bear walking around the neighborhood. These are actual photographs. They are about a mile from my house <laugh>. So, I think this guy probably should have gone away last week when the S&P 500 was up 20%. Clearly, he didn't get the memo. What do you think?

Adam Turnquist (11:10):

I think it looks like he's running into the woods, man, <laugh>, maybe that's, that's how I'm looking at it, I guess.

Jeff Buchbinder (11:17):

Yeah, I know these, you know, black bears are not typically dangerous and less threatened. I've been studying up to try to calm the wife a little bit. He covers a lot of ground. I mean, he's hit a bunch of these neighboring towns, and so you know, hopefully his stay and Needham is over very soon, and we can you know, be comfortable walking the dog again. But this is a little too close for comfort. But I think there's also maybe a market message as the bear potentially leaves town. So, let's go on to <laugh>. Let's go on onto the Fed talk a little more. It was obviously the big news of the week, Adam. So, you know, I'm calling it divergence, which basically is saying that the market and the Fed are misaligned, right? So, you, you put this chart together, which essentially shows you the gap between what the Fed thinks is going to happen and what the market thinks is going to happen. And they're pretty far apart, huh?

Adam Turnquist (12:14):

Yeah. And it's, you know, it's a time series too. So, you're looking at where the market had the fed funds futures prices as of a month ago, and then the orange line is where they're this week. So, you can notice this big divergence in how the market, or the fed funds futures market that is, has shifted to this higher for longer policy path. You can see a terminal rate right now in terms of those futures markets implied basically at 550 based on current market expectations. That is just below where the Fed used their or penciled in their summary of economic projections this week. They had penciled in two more rate hikes. So, at 560 is the level. So, a little bit of a divergence there. And I think the big divergence too is between equity markets and the Fed, because I think they're calling the Feds bluff that they're not going to continue hiking. The fixed income market, at least in nominal yields, seems to be aligned with that. We haven't had a major spike in treasury yields, given the notable shift here in terms of how hawkish things have gotten on the fed funds futures curve. But certainly a surprising reaction I think this week, overall.

Jeff Buchbinder (13:26):

Yeah, this is still not what the Fed is telling us they're going to do, but yeah, we've certainly, essentially the market's just taken out those cuts from the end of the year, right? And pushed them out. So we still think the Fed's going to start cutting, but it might not be until the very end of the year or maybe early 2024. But the Fed has been telling us, actually Powell said it directly, right? Two years or a couple of years, I think were his exact words, right?

Adam Turnquist (13:55):

That was certainly a surprise, and the market shrugged it off, which was even a bigger surprise there.

Jeff Buchbinder (14:02):

Yeah, sure did. And here's a way to visualize the Fed not having a lot of credibility here. And we know forecasting's a tough game. We do it. We've all looked silly forecasting at times in the past, but I think it's really important to keep in mind that the Feds no better than the market. In fact, they're probably worse than the market. This chart, I know there's a lot of lines and a lot of colors here, but it's a really simple concept. It just says, where did the Fed think rates were going to be in a year, and where were they actually <laugh>? Okay. So, the most dramatic miss, I think was 2017. Right at the start of 2017, that's the green line here in the middle of this chart. They said, you know, we'll be three and a half plus on the fed funds rate, and we ended up at, you know, closer to one, right?

Jeff Buchbinder (14:55):

That is a really big miss. It wasn't even around a major inflection point in the economy either. So, I think that's a really good example of why the market is ignoring the Fed largely. And you know, pricing in the pause, pricing in the end of the campaign, maybe in July, maybe it's already here, we'll have to see what unfolds. But you know, as I mentioned upfront, that inflation continues to fall and there is evidence, a lot of evidence that it will continue to fall. And so, if the Fed gets too tight, right? If they stay high and inflation comes down, they're essentially getting tighter and tighter for the environment, and then you have a slowing economy, you have pretty tight financial conditions still. It's a very dangerous place to be. So we think the Fed's going to be kind of forced to cut later this year as the economy softens. But clearly, they're not admitting that they're going to have to do that just yet. Any, any more color you want to add to that, Adam?

Adam Turnquist (16:02):

No, I think you've summarized it pretty well, and I've looked at similar data to this, and yeah, it's very I guess, surprising considering they actually set the target rate, how their accuracy is, you know, maybe around 50% or something like that historically or less than that. So but yeah, I think you think you nailed it there.

Jeff Buchbinder (16:23):

Yeah, we're going to pay more attention to what the market says and make our own forecasts. This is the concept I was just alluding to, it's relationship between fed funds and inflation, and if fed funds is higher than inflation, that, you know, illustrates a tightening condition or stance. And that's kind of, you know, obviously works in the other way, other direction. So, the fed funds rate is now higher than headline inflation, and it will soon be higher than core inflation. They're pretty much right aligned here based on the latest CPI data. It's going to be a tough place to be to stay this tight when inflation continues to make progress. One piece of inflation, we'll mention this in the Weekly Market Commentary, that'll be out on Tuesday. The inflation rate is, you know, what core is five three, I think right now.

Jeff Buchbinder (17:23):

The big reason why it's so high still, and it's been slow to come down, it just came down 20 basis points last month, is because of the rent component, largely, it's been very sticky, but we have a lot of multi-family construction going on that will lower rents over time. And then real time indicators, high frequency indicators of new leases, right? New rental agreements are showing that there really isn't much, if any, rental inflation right now. So you put those two pieces together and you know, over the next several months, inflation's going to start falling at a faster pace, we think. And so even though we're north of five on core inflation right now, ex food and energy we will be in the threes, we think in the fall. And then we think continue to fall from there in 2024. So let's, let's move on to your charts, Adam. We want to make sure we leave enough time to get into these. And, you know, the technology chart I think is really interesting, so, we'll start there, but you've also got an interesting study on the VIX, the volatility or fear gauge index, that I think will be interesting for our audience. So why don't you take it away.

Adam Turnquist (18:41):

Yeah, we'll start with the elephant in the room, at least based on sector weighting. And take a look at the technology sector here. This has really been the main engine of this year's rally, and we're seeing signs of overheating here on the chart. If you look at the top panel, this is the sector, and you can see it's running into overhead resistance going back to the 2021 highs. You're going to need a breakout above that level, you know, to surpass that area of resistance. But keep in mind how elevated we are above the uptrend above the 50-day moving average. I think we're at about a 12% premium above that 50-day moving average, that's historically high. You look at conditions within the actual technology sector toward the bottom, you have the percentage of stocks that are overbought based on RSI. Nearly a quarter of the index is now overbought and also just RSI, that momentum oscillator that we look at, that's also historically overbought.

Adam Turnquist (19:38):

So you add all of this up, certainly can make the case here for potential pullback off that area of overhead resistance. The good news, though, is that we're actually, we would be mean reverting back toward that uptrend, potentially the 50-day moving average. That's historically how this rallies played out. If you look back in the January timeframe, the sector was overbought pulled right back to the 50-day moving average similar price action back in the February timeframe, bounced right off that 50-day moving average. So I'd certainly use either the 20-day or the 50-day moving average as areas of support when we look at spots for potential downside here on the tech sector.

Jeff Buchbinder (20:21):

Yeah, it's been such a powerful move. I actually looked at the all-time high back in 2021, Adam, and it's really close. I think it was 3,107 on this index versus 3,080 now. That would be, you know, a pretty powerful breakout. So, and as you, you say it all the time, right? Overbought doesn't mean over.

Adam Turnquist (20:45):

Right, exactly, but you have to figure, you know, calculate a logical spot for a pullback, and then that's a major area of overhead resistance and just how extended everything is within the sector. I think you can make the case here for a potential, maybe a pause, and you can consolidate around that resistance, but certainly, could see a pullback maybe toward that 50-day moving average here.

Jeff Buchbinder (21:09):

Yeah, certainly the artificial intelligence hype is helping provide a tailwind. So, yeah, we're still neutral on tech here. Certainly, have debated a more positive stance. But yeah, given how far this run has gone that's the LPL Research view right now. How about yields? I mean, actually it ties to tech because, you know, tech is a long duration sector, meaning, you know, with more profits coming far in the future, higher interest rates, that means a higher discount rate on future profits. And, you know, tech tends not to like higher rates. So, it's important from that perspective in addition to the fact that it's important for bonds. So, you know, I know you've highlighted 388 on the 10-year as a key place to watch. You know, I've seen others talk about, you know, that sort of 390 to four range. I guess my question here is, what are the odds that we break out to the upside based on what you're seeing in the charts?

Adam Turnquist (22:11):

Yeah, this one's been interesting. I think if you look at the Fed messaging this week and the reaction in the bond market here, the 10-year really hasn't done anything. It's coming into, you know, for coming into today, basically unchanged despite the Fed penciling in two more rate hikes in messaging that higher for longer monetary policy path, the reaction was basically muted. And part of that is resistance. And you can see here on this chart, we've been in a downtrend since October on the 10-year yield, rejected at that level. And now momentum is starting to slip. That middle panel looks at the moving average convergence divergence or MACD is the much easier way to say, that's a momentum indicator that's now in a sell position. And on the bottom panel, this looks at the number of short contracts on 10-year treasury. So, they're playing for higher yields. I think if you're holding a short position in the 10-year right now, you really have to ask yourself when you're going to cover, you know, if we didn't get through that resistance level based on the hawkish commentary coming out of the FOMC this week, what's really going to drive that? And with momentum slipping, I think you could see a short covering rally here on the 10-year that would bring yields lower. Next spot we're watching is the 200-day moving average at 365.

Jeff Buchbinder (23:33):

Yeah. And it's not too hard to make a fundamental case for 365, I would say. You know, again, the LPL Research house view is that yields will kind of stay in this range or move lower. Historically that's what happens to yields after Fed pauses, they go lower. You also have, of course, falling inflation and we think slower economic growth between now and the end of the year, that could put some downward pressure on yields, even though you've got some of these liquidity concerns, right? Following the debt limit agreement, right? You know, all these T-bills flooding the market, maybe puts a little bit of upward pressure on short-term rates in the near term. Still, we think rates are going to behave here and that's why we're comfortable with our fixed income overweight, just a modest overweight, but still a fixed income overweight funded from cash. So, let's move on to the volatility piece of this, Adam, I thought this was interesting. You know, I always think that if, you know, lower volatility means lower future returns, right? You want to buy stocks when volatility is high and then can be unwound, right? You can get you know, less economic uncertainty and that helps push stocks higher coming out of a high volatility regime. But actually, the study that you did on the VIX, it's not quite consistent with that.

Adam Turnquist (25:00):

Yeah, it was interesting because when you look at the CBOE Volatility Index here, and this is, if you're not familiar with that index, it's just looking at the market's expectations for future volatility on the S&P 500, or really over the next 30 days. And over the last year we've been coming down making lower highs, lower lows, despite a bear market. So now we're at multi-year lows on the VIX tier, and we put together a blog post on this today looking at what different volatility regimes mean for S&P 500 returns. And going back to your acknowledgement or observation that, you know, buying the market when it's highly volatile, historically, you get the highest returns, but they're also, they have the most variance around the average. So there's a high standard deviation between returns when you're buying high volatility, which makes sense.

Adam Turnquist (25:53):

But, when you're actually in a low volatility regime, you still get above average returns on the S&P 500 with less dispersion around the means. So, a little bit more consistency I think since 1990 when you're below average, we'll call it, you're still putting up returns around a 11% on a 12-month basis. So potentially entering this new low volatility regime typically, or historically after, you know, periods of high volatility, you enter, you know, sustainable periods of low volatility, especially if you're transitioning from a bear to a bull market as we are now.

Jeff Buchbinder (26:31):

Yeah. So maybe the way to put it is you know, even if you don't think volatility is working in your favor, you can still see some pretty good returns, right? Certainly, more consistent, but pretty good returns in those you know, we'll call them the lower half of the VIX reading. So, you did that study and put it on LPLresearch.com, Adam, so I'll encourage folks to go look at that lplresearch.com for this really interesting study. And it should make folks a little more comfortable, you know, buying with a VIX at, what is it now? Like 14 and a half something? Yeah, 14 and a half. 14 and a half. That's a very low reading. You know, maybe, you know, you could look at a study of long-term returns maybe, that would be more compelling for buying at higher volatility levels.

Jeff Buchbinder (27:20):

But at less than a year it's a little more nuanced than just, you know, buy when vols high and sell when vols low. So interesting points there, Adam. Let's preview the week ahead here. And boy, I mean it was a dizzying week, <laugh> this week. I felt like, you know, celebrating the new bull market last week was kind of exhausting because you know, I passed out early last Friday. Today I feel like I have more energy maybe I don't know what it is, but I feel like I have more energy. Even though this was a huge week, right? We had with the CPI, the PPI and the Fed, I mean, we didn't even mention the ECB, European Central Bank, raised rates a quarter and they probably have more to do, the BOJ meeting.

Jeff Buchbinder (28:09):

We even had some earnings. There's a lot going on <laugh> right this week. Yeah. And so when I looked at the economic calendar for next week, I thought, wow, this is great <laugh>. There's not much on it. I still found some things to highlight. I think the claims is taking on added importance now, right? It's a very real time indicator. I mean one week lag, but it's not, you know, a month or two months lag, like a lot of economic data. So we're going to watch claims closely, that is key to what we get from the Fed. It's key to the inflation outlook in terms of how it translates to wages in terms of how it translates into consumer spending, of course. The job market's still very strong, so we probably don't have to worry too much about consumer spending right now.

Jeff Buchbinder (28:59):

Oh, by the way, we had retail sales this week too. Another big data point and that was pretty good. Better than expected. Certainly, showed consumers continue to spend. So, you know, all in all you'd have to say that the last week of economic data increased the odds of a soft landing, even if it's still going to be a real tough needle to thread there. But this week, so other than that, it's the leading index, which, you know, we kind of know what's in the leading index before it's released because a lot of the data points are known. The rising stock market will help. That's a component of the leading index, but it's still almost certainly going to be down, I believe it's 11 straight months if it's down. So we're almost at a full yearlong streak of down LEI year over year.

Jeff Buchbinder (29:50):

And it's almost down as much as it was during the pandemic, which is really hard to believe. Pandemic at the low, the year over year change in the LEI was down 10% and now it's down eight <laugh>. So really you know, it certainly adds evidence to the recession calls and you know, just like the yield curve has a pretty good track record, so we have to of course watch out even though the recession might be pushed out a little more than many people thought. Anything else here, Adam, that catches your eye?

Adam Turnquist (30:25):

Yeah, that'll be interesting. Certainly, a welcome calendar after this week's busy one. So be watching some of that housing data. Just, it's been an interesting mix of housing data over the last year. Certainly, we're seeing improvements in what you witnessed, even in some of the equity markets or equities that are tied to housing. Relatively constructive updates that we witnessed this week, had some breakouts to new highs in companies like Lennar. Certainly, kind of bucking this looming recession trend that we continue to hear about. So, kind of an interesting dichotomy between, you know, something like the leading index versus what we're seeing in housing stocks or even some of the data.

Jeff Buchbinder (31:06):

Yeah, the housing stocks kind of priced in the housing recession early on and is, you know, clearly coming out of it. There's some massive moves in home builders this year whereas, you know, the consumer spending piece of the economy is probably going to be the last to fall if it does fall. So yeah, home builders have been a real area of strength, no doubt. So yeah, the housing data I think maybe is a little bit more interesting than it normally is because we're kind of coming out of this housing, we'll call it mini downturn, with a spike in mortgage rates. So yeah, so housing, maybe I could have highlighted that on a quiet week. And then we get these preliminary PMIs, I mean the official PMIs from the Institute for Supply Management matter more, but these preliminary ones will get a little bit of attention too, I just think they'll highlight the fact that the services economy is still really strong and still experiencing some benefit of some pent-up demand coming out of the latter stages of the pandemic.

Jeff Buchbinder (32:14):

But manufacturing is, you know, it's only about, I don't know, 12, 13% of the economy, something like that. Not a huge piece of the economy anymore, but you know, it's in a mild recession, fair to say. So, we'll be looking for some signs of stability there. And that's one of the reasons why there are a lot of folks out there nervous about earnings because ISM tends to correlate with earnings and it's signaling more weakness ahead. I mean, we see more earnings weakness ahead too, but maybe just not as dramatically so as some of the folks out there, you know, calling for another 10% haircut. We're really calling for maybe a two or 3% haircut from here. And by the way earnings estimates have held up very well lately. And it looks like margins, at least for now might be bottoming out. And that is certainly a much better outcome than a lot of the bears out there have anticipated. So, there's been a bit of fundamental support for stocks lately. It's not just you know, pure momentum or artificial intelligence hype or whatever you want to say there. So, I think we'll go ahead and wrap there. Any closing remarks, Adam, before we wrap?

Adam Turnquist (33:31):

No, I just hope everyone has a great Father's Day weekend and a Juneteenth holiday, so thanks for having me on.

Jeff Buchbinder (33:37):

Absolutely. Thanks for joining, Adam. Really interesting charts this week. Looking forward to of course bringing you back as we always do. I'll echo what you just said. Everybody enjoy the long weekend. Actually, by the time you listen, you will have already hopefully enjoyed the holiday weekend. Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there. Enjoy the Juneteenth holiday as well, and we will talk to you next week. Thanks for tuning in to LPL Market Signals. Take care everybody.

Markets Shrug Off Hawkish Fed

In the latest LPL Market Signals podcast, the LPL Chief Equity Strategist Jeffrey Buchbinder and Chief Technical Strategist Adam Turnquist recap another strong week for stocks despite a hawkish message from the Federal Reserve (Fed) and use technical analysis to assess whether stocks, particularly the technology sector, are due for a pullback.

Stocks enjoyed another strong week—the fifth straight weekly gain for the S&P 500 Index—as market participants seemingly shrugged off the hawkish message from the Fed. Gains were led by the technology sector amid continued artificial intelligence enthusiasm, some well-received earnings news, and lower interest rates. Fixed income markets also shrugged off the Fed, as the 10-year Treasury yield held below its downtrend dating back to the October highs.

Markets remain highly skeptical of the Fed’s plan, based on its dot plot, to potentially raise interest rates twice more this year. Historically, the Fed’s track record predicting the fed funds rate has been shaky at best. And the fed funds rate is already above the rate of inflation, indicating a tight policy stance.

The strategists discuss the S&P 500’s recent breakout and next major areas of resistance. They note how overbought conditions are becoming widespread, especially in the heavyweight technology sector, and conclude that technical evidence is growing for a potential pause or pullback. The strategists also discuss what a low volatility backdrop could mean for stocks going forward.

Last, the strategists preview a quiet economic calendar this week after last week’s barrage. Jobless claims will continue to garner attention as a timely indicator of the health of the labor market, while the Leading Economic Index (LEI) may fuel additional recession concerns.

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IMPORTANT DISCLOSURES

This material is for general information only and is not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. There is no assurance that the views or strategies discussed are suitable for all investors or will yield positive outcomes. Investing involves risks including possible loss of principal. Any economic forecasts set forth in the podcast may not develop as predicted and are subject to change.

References to markets, asset classes, and sectors are generally regarding the corresponding market index. All indexes are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly. Index performance is not indicative of the performance of any investment and do not reflect fees, expenses, or sales charges. All performance referenced is historical and is no guarantee of future results.

Stock investing includes risks, including fluctuating prices and loss of principal. Bonds are subject to market and interest rate risk if sold prior to maturity. Bond values will decline as interest rates rise and bonds are subject to availability and change in price.

High yield/junk bonds (grade BB or below) are not investment grade securities, and are subject to higher interest rate, credit, and liquidity risks than those graded BBB and above. They generally should be part of a diversified portfolio for sophisticated investors.

Any company names noted herein are for educational purposes only and not an indication of trading intent or a solicitation of their products or services. LPL Financial doesn’t provide research on individual equities. All information is believed to be from reliable sources; however, LPL Financial makes no representation as to its completeness or accuracy.

The Standard and Poor's 500, or simply the S&P 500, is a stock market index tracking the performance of 500 large companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States.

The Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index, or the Agg, is a broad base, market capitalization-weighted bond market index representing intermediate term investment grade bonds traded in the United States.

All index data is from FactSet.

All information is believed to be from reliable sources; however, LPL Financial makes no representation as to its completeness or accuracy.

This Research material was prepared by LPL Financial, LLC. 

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