What fireworks, what volatility!

The Nasdaq soared +3% to 16,041, the Nasdaq-100 soared +3.1% to 18,005, the S&P500 (+2.1%) shattered its previous record of 5,090 by more than 50 points, with the VIX plunging -6% to 14.4... all in titanic volumes, with over $60 billion traded in Nvidia alone (equivalent to 1 month's trading on the Paris stock exchange), which must also be a record (to be verified, but this is more than 2 times the average volume seen on Tesla at the end of 2023, which was already considered out of the ordinary in the 21st century).
The Dow Jones also broke a record (at 39,070), but its +1.2% seems so modest that this index seems to be on another planet.

It was a session unlike any seen on the Nasdaq since the end of 1999: not that +3% is a spectacular gain (there were many sessions at +4% or more during the rebounds of 2003 or 2009), but what is singular is that it occurred when the indices were already at their highest.
Record highs beaten with spreads of +3%, in a climate of total euphoria, with valuations exploding by +10 to +15% in a single session on stocks that were already historically overbought, had not happened for 2 decades.

The semiconductor sector literally exploded, posting one of the biggest intraday rises in history at +6.5%.
Nvidia (+16.4% to $785.4) had an impact comparable to that of Nokia on the Helsinki stock exchange in the early 2000s: the stock really "made" the trend, literally sucking up all available capital.... which marginalizes 90% of the other components of the S&P500 or the Nasdaq Composite.

The Russell-2000, for example, gained just +0.95%, while the "technos" (including "semi", "comm" and social networks) soared by +4.4% (i.e. almost 5 times as much).
Nvidia dragged all semiconductors in its wake, except Intel with -1.1%: AMD soared +10.7%, Marvell Techno +6.7%, Broadcom and Micron soared +6.2% and +5.4% respectively, Applied Materials, KLA and ASML soared +4.9%, Lam Research +4.7%, Western Digital +4.3%.
Of particular note were Meta (+3.9%), Amazon (+3.6%) and Microsoft (+2.5%).
The Nasdaq-100 also suffered a "setback of the day": Lucid Group plunged -17%, but was down as much as -24% during the session.
On the bond front, T-Bonds ended unchanged at 4.325%.

We must mention the "figures of the day", even if they were relegated to 7th place in Wall Street's list of interests by Nvidia.


The S&P Global PMI composite index came in at 51.4 in a flash estimate, having reached 52 the previous month, its highest level since July 2023.

"Cost pressures eased further, but growth momentum in the services sector weakened", explains S&P Global, while manufacturing output returned to growth.

Sales of existing homes rose by a slightly stronger-than-expected +3.1% in January in the United States (NAR survey), thanks in particular to an acceleration of the market in the Midwest, South and West of the country... but on an annual basis, sales of existing homes fell by 1.7%.
The median sales price was $379,100, a 5.1% increase over 12 months.
At the current rate, it takes about three months to clear the inventory of homes, according to the NAR.

The Labor Department announced a -12.000 in the week ending February 12, to 201,000 claimants.

The four-week moving average - more representative of the underlying trend - came out at 215,250 that same week, down by 3,500 on the previous week's revised average.

Finally, the number of people receiving regular benefits fell by 27,000 to 1,862,000 in the week to February 5, the most recent period available for this statistic.

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