US stocks fell from record highs, as investors debated whether the Federal Reserve would risk letting inflation spiral out of control.
To be more specific, S&P 500 closed 0.3% lower on Tuesday, after JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs reported mixed results at the start of the second quarter earnings season.
Meanwhile, tech stocks performed very great, so Nasdaq 100 briefly hit another all-time high before dropping slightly.
Bleakley Advisory CIO Peter Boockvar said tech stocks persisted because long bids fell before the auction. And now that rates are rising across the yield curve, tech stocks are being sold, which is the only thing that keeps indices up. S&P 500 and Nasdaq might be overbought, but it will not last long.
As mentioned earlier, the reason why indices fell is the latest report on US CPI, which, according to the data, rose 0.9% year-on-year and by 5.4% month-over-month.
Expectations of a strong reporting season might have supported growth in stocks, but this is only because investors are anticipating how central banks will abandon the support programs they implemented to push economies away from the recent coronavirus crisis. Inflationary pressure is still a concern, amid rumors about when the Fed will start reducing bond purchases.
In fact, Nuveen CIO Saira Malik said that in the second half of this year, climbing up will be very difficult, as inflation will continue to rise, not to mention profit will grow very sharply. Problems related to coronavirus will also remain.
Other key events this week are:
- policy meeting of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (Wednesday);
- policy meeting of the Bank of Korea (Thursday);
- data on China's 2nd quarter GDP (Thursday);
- semi-annual monetary policy report of the FRS to the Congress (Thursday);
- policy meeting of the Bank of Japan (Friday).
