Friday’s market action argues that investors and traders are looking to buy shares of Apple, Amazon, Microsoft–you know the usual suspects–ahead of what looks like a blowout earnings season that will start on July 13 when JPMorgan Chase (JPM) reports before the market open.
On Friday, on the back of a June employment report that put the economy back on track for a stunning year on year recovery from the 2020 Pandemic recession, the Standard & Poor’s 500 gained 0.75%, and Did Jones Industrial Average rose 0.44% and the small cap Russell 2000 gained 1.01%.
The technology and bank heavy NASDAQ Composite was higher by 0.81% and the BIG TECH heavy NASDAQ 100 closed up 1.15%.
Among the biggest winners for the day were Adobe (ADBE) up 1.43%, Amazon (AMZN) up 2.27%, Apple (AAPL) up 1.99%, Microsoft (MSFT) up 2.23%, Alphabet (GOOG) up 1.86%, and Nvidia (NVDA) up 1.36%.
I think the logic here is pretty straightforward. If we’re going to see now just the 61% year over year growth in earnings now projected by Wall Street analysts, but a significant earnings surprise above that projection, the place to be is in the shares of these mega-cap revenue and earnings growth machines.
If I’m right and that is indeed the logic driving the market on Friday, I think we should see more buying of these shares in the upcoming week in anticipation of actual earnings reports from these companies. Microsoft reports on July 28 with Amazon and Apple reporting on July 29.
Full disclosure: I own shares of Nvidia in my personal portfolios.
