Weekly Analysis
An expectedly uneventful week came and went, with global equities basically having retraced to their interim highs, and the highly anticipated (and over scrutinized) Nvidia results saw some wild intraday noise, but ultimately passed as a non-event as the tech giant mostly met its lofty expectations.
Data was supportive with Q2 GDP revised up to a 3.0% handle, and initial claims coming in as expected with no surprises out of the rest of Tier-2 data. Outside of the US, a -40% drop in China’s PDD’s stock price actually raised more macro concerns earlier this week, given management’s downbeat guidance and worrying concerns over the health of the Chinese consumer.
In fixed income, yields held their range this week, though the vaunted treasury yield curve (2/10s) is now a stone throw’s distance from dis-inverting after spending 2yr years in negative territory, and is the strongest sign that macro participants are now fully buying in to a start of a new easing cycle from the Fed.
Crypto had an uneventful week with BTC and ETH hovering around +/- 1.5% compared to last week’s levels, with TON being the major laggard (-15%) due to Pavel Durov’s arrest in France. ETF inflows remain subdued with the SEC ‘back in action’ as they filed a Wells Notice against popular NFT marketplace Opensea, alleging that NFTs should be considered securities. We expect market action to pick up after US Labour Day and into next week’s NFP to kickstart a busy Fall season, and political headlines to start gaining importance, in particular, with the latest Harris/Walz announced plans to raise taxes aggressively.