When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.
Markets ended the first full trading week of July on a positive note, with all three main equity indexes posting gains on Friday. Investors, traders and speculators welcomed another hot initial public offering (IPO) as they look forward to the acceleration of earnings reporting season and new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s first testimony on Capitol Hill since taking over at the world’s most important central bank.
Materials stocks took the lead on Friday, as 10 of 11 sectors closed in the green. Tech stocks were higher, too, while Nvidia (NVDA, +4.0%) and Nike (NKE, +3.8%) were the top-performing Dow Jones stocks.
SK Hynix (SKHYV, +17.0%) started trading late in the morning and immediately popped to an intraday of $176.34, 18.3% above its IPO price. After raising $26.5 billion this week, SK Hynix now ranks among the biggest IPOs in U.S. history.
Financial stocks added more than 1%, with Bank of America (BAC, +0.7%), Citigroup (C, +0.7%), Goldman Sachs (GS, -0.1%), JPMorgan Chase (JPM, +0.3%) and Wells Fargo (WFC, +0.2%) scheduled to report second-quarter earnings before the opening bell next Tuesday.
By the closing bell, the Nasdaq Composite had added 0.3% to 26,281, finishing with a 1.7% weekly gain. The broad-based S&P 500 rose 0.4% on Friday and 1.2% for the week to 7,575. The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average ticked up 0.3% to 52,673 but tracked back 0.5% over the five days.
What will Warsh tell Congress?
As Louis Navellier of Navellier & Associates foreshadows, next week is a big one for the earnings calendar: “We are locked and loaded for another earnings announcement season,” Navellier writes, noting that valuations for “fundamentally superior stocks” are being compressed.
It’s also a big one for the economic calendar: “I think it is safe to say that Fed Chairman Warsh is planning to turn the Fed inside out, streamline it and make it operate more efficiently,” Navellier writes.
Warsh is scheduled to testify before the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday and at the Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday.
As Navellier explains, Warsh is putting together five task forces to “re-examine how the central bank operates.” The task forces will focus on AI, productivity and jobs; Fed communications; the Fed’s balance sheet, inflation and economic data.
Looking for more timely stock market news to help gauge the health of your portfolio? Sign up for Closing Bell, our free newsletter that’s delivered straight to your inbox at the close of each trading day.
