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We’re still taking a while cranking up this trading week, following a slightly mixed session to start the holiday-shortened week yesterday. All three major indexes are up this morning — the Dow +80 points, the S&P 500 +7 and the Nasdaq +15 — but it feels as if market participants are still wiping sleep from their eyes. That everything looks green at this hour certainly helps; even Energy and Bitcoin are performing well right now.
We talked in this space yesterday about the “meme stocks” taking some of the air out of the market, with trading pressures often stemming from general run-ups in companies like GameStop (GME - Free Report) and AMC (AMC - Free Report) . This morning, we’re also seeing shares of BlackBerry (BB - Free Report) off to the races again, looking for its fifth consecutive up trading day, +16% as of this hour, and nearly +15% yesterday. For its part, AMC is up another 20% today.
Aside from potentially stoking some irrational trading habits, these meme stocks also indicate a lot of money sloshing around the stock market without a lot of purposeful direction. Not that there aren’t some helpful news items boosting companies like AMC — the Great Reopening and millions in new capital raised, for instance — but Q1 earnings season is just about over, and no economic prints are pushing on the market.
That may change as of tomorrow morning: aside from normal Initial and Continuing Jobless Claims Thursday morning, we also look forward to May private-sector employment figures from Automatic Data Processing (ADP - Free Report) . Expectations are for another big monthly boost in American jobs: 680K. This is down from the 742K posted for April, but still opening the spigot on re-hires, especially in service-related businesses as a new summer approaches.
Of course, following the ADP report will be non-farm payrolls from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Friday, which are expected to have brought 674K new jobs last month with an Unemployment Rate dropping 20 basis points to 5.9%. It would be the first five-handle on Unemployment in the pandemic era, although the labor market appears to have cooled somewhat from expectations over the past few weeks.
In general, however, the market is in a good place. The Dow is riding a four-day winning streak, up seven of its last eight sessions, even though indexes overall have done a good job of keeping gains (or losses) measured, within relatively reasonable valuations. Currently, aside from meme stocks obscuring overall growth levels, the open question seems to be whether inflation headwinds are transitory (as the Fed believes) or more permanent. Data in the coming days and weeks will inform.
If you’re looking for big gains, there couldn’t be a better time to get in on a young industry primed to skyrocket from $17.7 billion back in 2019 to an expected $73.6 billion by 2027.
After a clean sweep of 6 election referendums in 5 states, pot is now legal in 36 states plus D.C. Federal legalization is expected soon and that could be a still greater bonanza for investors. Even before the latest wave of legalization, Zacks Investment Research has recommended pot stocks that have shot up as high as +285.9%.
You’re invited to check out Zacks’ Marijuana Moneymakers: An Investor’s Guide. It features a timely Watch List of pot stocks and ETFs with exceptional growth potential.
Image: Shutterstock
Markets Up Ahead of Jobs Data Later This Week
Wednesday, June 2, 2021
We’re still taking a while cranking up this trading week, following a slightly mixed session to start the holiday-shortened week yesterday. All three major indexes are up this morning — the Dow +80 points, the S&P 500 +7 and the Nasdaq +15 — but it feels as if market participants are still wiping sleep from their eyes. That everything looks green at this hour certainly helps; even Energy and Bitcoin are performing well right now.
We talked in this space yesterday about the “meme stocks” taking some of the air out of the market, with trading pressures often stemming from general run-ups in companies like GameStop (GME - Free Report) and AMC (AMC - Free Report) . This morning, we’re also seeing shares of BlackBerry (BB - Free Report) off to the races again, looking for its fifth consecutive up trading day, +16% as of this hour, and nearly +15% yesterday. For its part, AMC is up another 20% today.
Aside from potentially stoking some irrational trading habits, these meme stocks also indicate a lot of money sloshing around the stock market without a lot of purposeful direction. Not that there aren’t some helpful news items boosting companies like AMC — the Great Reopening and millions in new capital raised, for instance — but Q1 earnings season is just about over, and no economic prints are pushing on the market.
That may change as of tomorrow morning: aside from normal Initial and Continuing Jobless Claims Thursday morning, we also look forward to May private-sector employment figures from Automatic Data Processing (ADP - Free Report) . Expectations are for another big monthly boost in American jobs: 680K. This is down from the 742K posted for April, but still opening the spigot on re-hires, especially in service-related businesses as a new summer approaches.
Of course, following the ADP report will be non-farm payrolls from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Friday, which are expected to have brought 674K new jobs last month with an Unemployment Rate dropping 20 basis points to 5.9%. It would be the first five-handle on Unemployment in the pandemic era, although the labor market appears to have cooled somewhat from expectations over the past few weeks.
In general, however, the market is in a good place. The Dow is riding a four-day winning streak, up seven of its last eight sessions, even though indexes overall have done a good job of keeping gains (or losses) measured, within relatively reasonable valuations. Currently, aside from meme stocks obscuring overall growth levels, the open question seems to be whether inflation headwinds are transitory (as the Fed believes) or more permanent. Data in the coming days and weeks will inform.
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Time to Invest in Legal Marijuana
If you’re looking for big gains, there couldn’t be a better time to get in on a young industry primed to skyrocket from $17.7 billion back in 2019 to an expected $73.6 billion by 2027.
After a clean sweep of 6 election referendums in 5 states, pot is now legal in 36 states plus D.C. Federal legalization is expected soon and that could be a still greater bonanza for investors. Even before the latest wave of legalization, Zacks Investment Research has recommended pot stocks that have shot up as high as +285.9%.
You’re invited to check out Zacks’ Marijuana Moneymakers: An Investor’s Guide. It features a timely Watch List of pot stocks and ETFs with exceptional growth potential.
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