Wednesday, July 9, 2025
Markets climbed again today — off session highs early, but recovering from a late-morning trough across all major indexes. This means we’re seeing strength in more than just the AI/tech trade currently. The Dow gathered +217 points, +0.49%, while the S&P gained +37 points, +0.61%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq moved past these levels, +0.94%, while the small-cap Russell 2000 grew +1.07%.
NVIDIA NVDA today became the first corporation to attain a $4 trillion market capitalization, leading the way, as it continues to do, on GPUs used for AI, data centers, etc. Meanwhile, Microsoft MSFT, the second-largest company, has also reached record highs. But even supply-chain solutions company Fastenal FAST is trading at record highs — at currently 40x the value of forward earnings. Even Bitcoin reached a new high today, to $112K.
Prime Day Posts Weak Day 1
Amazon’s AMZN Prime Day posted a weak first day of its now 4-day run, -41%. These are not simple comps to make to prior years; it’s possible consumers feel more comfortable waiting out prospective sales to the latter part of the campaign. Last year, sales gained +11% to $14.2 billion, a record. We’ll see if/when this year’s Prime Day picks up some slack in the days to come. After all, we’ve seen other metrics regarding consumer spending lately showing signs of weakness.
FOMC Minutes Released, with Differing Opinions Emerging
Today saw the release of the Fed minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) for last month’s meeting. The monetary policy decision for June saw zero dissenters from keeping the 4.25-4.50% range intact, but looking into these minutes a little more deeply, we do see a “couple” voting members willing to start cutting as early as July, but “some” recommending zero cuts for all of 2025. Something will have to give here.
“Many participants” are looking toward trade deals with other countries to solve for some of the potential inflation coming from tariffs about to hit our economy, but those have proven difficult to wrangle. Just this afternoon, President Trump threatened a +50% new tariff on the country of Brazil. Which means we’re still baiting responses from trading partners, and not finalizing any deals as of today.
What to Expect from the Stock Market Tomorrow
Even though we’re looking toward next week’s Big Banks reporting to usher in Q2 earnings season in earnest, Thursday morning brings us a few key reports: Delta Air Lines DAL, Conagra CAG and Helen of Troy HELE. We know Delta will give us a good read on airline travel last quarter, while Conagra is a major agriculture exporter. (You can see the full Zacks Earnings Calendar here.)
Helen of Troy is the parent company of household goods manufacturer OXO, among other brands, and as such may be heavily impacted by our current — and future — tariff environment. Last quarter, the company missed earnings estimates for the first time in five years, and soon after the company’s CEO was replaced. It should be an interesting story to follow.
Finally, as we see most Thursday mornings, Weekly Jobless Claims will be out tomorrow, and they have provided interesting narratives of their own of late. On Initial Claims, they have cooled down in recent weeks from a near-term high of 250K new jobless claims to 233K last week. Continuing Claims have reached 1.964 million in consecutive weeks — the highest levels since November 2021.
Once we breach 2 million longer-term jobless claims per week — and it will likely be here sooner than later; three months ago we were still down at 1.83 million — this will effectively change the narrative in the minds of many analysts about the strength and steadiness of the domestic labor market. It’s too early to call this right now, as this data could pull back from here, but it is something to pay close attention to.
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Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) : Free Stock Analysis Report
Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) : Free Stock Analysis Report
Delta Air Lines, Inc. (DAL) : Free Stock Analysis Report
Fastenal Company (FAST) : Free Stock Analysis Report
NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA) : Free Stock Analysis Report
Conagra Brands (CAG) : Free Stock Analysis Report
Helen of Troy Limited (HELE) : Free Stock Analysis Report
This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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