Day Traders Diary

7-31-24

The major averages performed well thanks to better than expected earnings from some major tech names before the Federal Reserve meeting this afternoon. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 99 points or 0.24% The S&P 500 rose 85 points or 1.58% while the Nasdaq Composite jumped 451 points or 2.64%.

AMD was the diamond today, up 4%, its best day in a while following strong earnings and raised guidance due to demand for their AI chips. The strong outlook suggests that AMD is making headway against Nvidia and their AI chips.

Not to be outdone, Nvidia jumped 12% on an upgrade at Morgan Stanley. All the big cap techs look good except for Miccrosoft. Microsoft fell a percent on lackluster earnings last night due in part to their quarterly cloud revenue.

Boeing rose 2% after announcing a new CEO and quarterly results that showed a wider-than-expected loss and disappointing revenue for the second quarter.

Humana was the dog today down 10% on earnings and weak guidance after the company warned of higher-than-expected inpatient hospital admissions that point toward elevated costs for the insurer.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell 5 basis points to 4.092% while the 2-year Treasury yield dropped 4 basis points to 4.315% after the Fed left rates unchanged, pointing to further desire to bring inflation down to the central bank's 2% goal.

For the month, even with today's rally, the Nasdaq Composite closed in the red down 0.8% the last four weeks. The S&P 500 advanced 1.1% for the month, while the Dow posted a 4.4% gain for its best month since December amid investors' rotation into cyclical corners of the market. The Russell 2000 jumped over 10% for the month, with its best month verse the S&P 500 since 2000.