Day Traders Diary

7/24/24

The major averages are taking a hit following lackluster earnings from a number of big cap tech stocks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 400 points or 1% with weakness in Visa and Microsoft. The S&P 500 is down 123 points or 2.2% while the Nasdaq is down 639 points or 3.5%.

The sell off started with Google parent Alphabet and Tesla down 3% and 11% respectively. The Google earnings were actually good, but the stock had run up into earnings. Teska actually missed estimates and saw a slowdown in growth at least in the short term.

 The sell off in tech expanded and accelerated into the rest of the big cap techs. Meta fell 5%, Apple and Amazon were down 3% and Nvidia was down 6%. Chip stocks took a hit today. Texas Instruments rose to start the day on better than expected earnings, but fell into the red by the close.

More than 20% of the S&P 500 companies have reported their second-quarter earnings, with 80% of them topping expectations, according to FactSet data.

Investors have largely priced in the chances of the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates at its September meeting. Combined with rising confidence in a soft landing, the market has continued its rally, with rate-sensitive sectors such as small caps and industrials rising in recent weeks.

For the month, however, the Russell 2000 is up 7.2% as investors rotate out of large-cap tech names into beaten-down smaller ones. The Dow is up 1.9% for July while the S&P 500 is down 0.6%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq s fallen 2.2%.