FTDS News and Press, FIRST TRUST EXCH From 01/22/24

2024-01-22 20:25:00 ET Summary A table that Refinitiv publishes only occasionally is valuable since it gives perspective on the S&P 500 sector’s market cap weight in the benchmark, versus that same sector’s earnings. The problem in the late 1990s for large-cap te...

2024-01-22 11:15:00 ET Summary After weeks of hovering within easy striking distance of its old record high close, S&P 500 finally broke through and set a new record. The index reached its new record on 19 January 2024, closing out the trading week at 4,839.81. The record ...

2024-01-22 05:00:00 ET Summary After a correction from August through October, the market has been on a tear. Technology had a very good week, especially among the Magnificent 7 mega-cap stocks. The S&P Top 7 stocks continue to dominate the market, but that dominance is sl...

2024-01-20 21:06:00 ET Summary Our belief is that there will primarily be one call to get correct - one call to rule them all - and that is whether the US economy has a hard landing (recession) or a soft one. Every hard landing starts out as a soft landing, marked by the Fed's int...

2024-01-20 10:30:00 ET Summary On Friday, the S&P 500 Index hit a new high, surpassing its previous record set in January 2022. A resilient economy, quickly fading inflation, and strong 2023 performance fueled the market’s new record. It’s far more interestin...

2024-01-18 04:04:00 ET Summary As we move into 2024, it looks like expectations have been reset, with most forecasters now expecting the economy to glide in for a soft landing and interest rates to decline, and while that may seem like good news, it will represent a challenge for equi...

2024-01-17 00:35:00 ET Summary Banks kick off earnings season on a sour note. The LERI shows corporate uncertainty easing to its lowest level since 2015. Up next: Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, Birkenstock. Peak weeks for Q4 season run f...

2024-01-16 21:20:00 ET Summary January US Empire Manufacturing reading this morning was -43.7, much worse than the -5 estimated and much weaker than during the 2008 financial crisis/great recession. The analyst consensus is for S&P earnings per share growth of more than 10 per...

2024-01-16 21:17:00 ET Summary SPX index rose 1.8% to 4,783.83. After the week's headlines, the CME Group's FedWatch Tool projects the Fed will hold the Federal Funds Rate steady in a target range of 5.25-5.50% until 20, March 2023 (2024-Q1), when investors anticipate it will laun...

2024-01-14 00:20:00 ET Summary Looking back at last year, the best investment decision would have been to ignore diversification. Throughout history, we’ve seen numerous instances where capital heavily concentrates on a single company or a small cluster of stocks. We ar...