Midday Market Brief: Hiring Freeze

Any chance of a trifecta?

Going back to last Friday, the last two market sessions have started down and out, only to push higher as the day wore on. Investors are faced with the same dynamic on Tuesday, with the S&P 500 down modestly but without much conviction to continue strongly either up or down.

With another earnings season behind us and a slow summer news cycle ahead (US/global elections notwithstanding), the macro outlook will likely loom large in the weeks ahead. The April JOLTS report released Tuesday showed the lowest level of job openings since February 2021 — normally, a bullish sign these days, but also with the half-empty proposition of less hiring/less spending/less corporate profits, which isn’t a recipe for stocks to run way higher. Friday’s jobs report will be pretty significant in that regard.

Movers & Shakers

Here are some stocks making news today:

• Intel shares were mostly flat on Tuesday after announcing new AI chips for data centers. Nvidia received more love a day earlier when it announced a new chip lineup, which tells you something about who’s considered the AI king of the chip hill.
• Carnival stock was up 5% after the company said it planned to absorb its Australian line of cruise ships into its flagship brand in a bid to boost capacity as demand continues unabated.
• Core Scientific jumped 38.6% to $6.75 following a report that cloud computing provider CoreWeave offered to buy the Bitcoin miner for $5.75 a share. I mean, the names are already so close…
• Viking Therapeutics shares fell 10.2% despite a good start to the trading session on what seemed like positive test results for its liver disease drug. The stock has had a somewhat wild run in 2024, but is now down about 29% in the past month.