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Ali, let’s start with you on those record highs that we’re watching.
Well, as you were just laying out, Brad, we’re seeing green across the screen in futures trading. So, if these gains hold, we could see an extension of that rally, another record high potentially for the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq composite. So, it feels like there’s a lot of optimism being priced into this market, a lot of resiliency. However, there are some cracks underneath the surface. Uh for example, the performance gap between smaller and larger cap stocks in the S&P 500, that’s back to its widest level since July 2024. So, that means market breadth is narrowing. AKA, those bigger cap stocks, they are once again strongly outperforming your smaller average stocks. And when you have that sort of narrow leadership, that leads to a more fragile market. So, we’re going to want to see a bit more market breadth there, which we have seen, but some fraying at the edges. And then another crack that stood out in my inbox this morning is I’ve been receiving a lot of commentary from Wall Street strategists about their mid-year outlooks, what they’re expecting in the future. And I have to say that most of the commentary that I’ve gotten, it’s skewed pretty bearish. Raymond James saying that the economy is on weaker footing than markets believe. In regard to Fed cuts, Morgan Stanley said a cut in July or September is actually a bit more unlikely than markets are pricing in. And markets, so far over the past week, they’ve doubled their odds of a July cut. Meanwhile, RBC’s Lori Calvasina, she called out a tug of war between growth and value in the year ahead. They’re actually overweight value and cyclical, notably financials and now materials. So, a bit more defensive in nature there. And then finally, BNP Paribas said that slowing consumer demand is a key concern. They cited declining retail sales, soft Q2 personal consumption trends as a key risk to earnings going forward. So, after this blockbuster first half, there is this cautiousness around what the second half of the year could bring. It’s all going to come down to that economic data, what we see on the jobs front this Friday, and then of course, earnings, which are right around the corner. And Nez, I know that you’re watching Bitcoin.
Yeah, that’s right, Ali. Bitcoin right now hovering above 107,000 per token. And it is really shaping up to be a banner year for Bitcoin as we close out this first half of the year. We are taking a look at the token that’s up about 14% year to date. Since President Trump was elected last year, though it’s up about 50%. And by the way, Bitcoin’s share of the total crypto asset market is now at 64%. There’s a lot of momentum behind the token, of course. Uh there’s a shift going towards a more regulated industry. You had earlier this year President Trump assigning an executive order for a Bitcoin strategic reserve. You’ve had a cryptozar, crypto-friendly SEC chair. All of this has been very bullish for Bitcoin. Not so much for other, uh for altcoins, so to speak. So you have seen, this is a year-to-date chart on our Yahoo Finance interactive, and you can see Solana down 22% uh year-to-date, Ethereum down 26% year-to-date. So it’s really Bitcoin the one that has gained uh quite a bit. And taking a look at gold because we are also watching some of the commodities um right now. Gold has also seen a bit of a pullback. It’s right now hovering at around 3,294 per ounce. But gold has faced a a pullback in recent weeks. A lot of this has to do with easing of geopolitical tensions and also signs of progress in the global trade war. Uh nevertheless, you are seeing that year to date gold is up about 23%.
