Tech Giants Lead Market Surge As Dow Blue Chips Stall; Microsoft Hits New Highs While Bitcoin Rallies: The Week In The Markets

Wall Street’s tech giants continued to extend their gains in the week following the Federal Reserve's November meeting.

The Nasdaq 100 has once again outperformed other major indices, driven by the Magnificent 7, which includes artificial intelligence winners and tech stocks with the highest market capitalization, such as Apple Inc. AAPL, Microsoft Corp. MSFT, Alphabet Inc. GOOG GOOGL, Amazon Inc. AMZN, Meta Platforms Inc. META, NVIDIA Corp. NVDA and Tesla, Inc. TSLA

The Dow’s blue-chip stocks stalled, while small caps plummeted, retracing more than half of the previous week’s gains. Energy, as tracked by the Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund XLE, was again the weakest performer among sectors.  

Microsoft achieves fresh all-time highs: The tech giant reached a new all-time high, surpassing $367 per share on Friday, solidifying its position as a major AI winner. Microsoft's market capitalization has now reached $2.73 trillion, trailing Apple’s by just $150 billion.

Bitcoin surpasses $750-billion market capitalization, now worth more than Tesla: Bitcoin BTC/USD marked its fourth consecutive week of gains on reports that the SEC has initiated talks with Grayscale regarding its application to transform its GBTC trust product into a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded product. The total value of all outstanding Bitcoin crossed the $750 billion mark, surpassing Tesla's market capitalization.

BlackRock Set To Launch Ethereum ETF: The world’s largest asset management firm, BlackRock Inc. BLK, signaled interest in launching an Ethereum ETH/USD exchange-traded fund on Thursday, a bullish sign for the digital assets space.

Fed’s Powell closes the door on early rate cuts, snapping stocks’ winning streak: A relatively hawkish speech from Fed Chair Jerome Powell on Thursday ended the U.S. stock market’s longest daily winning streak in over two years. Investors slightly revised down expectations for the number of rate cuts in 2024.

Economic uncertainties for 2024 affect forecasters: Notable investment firms published their economic outlooks for 2024 this week. While Goldman Sachs still foresees a well-above-consensus growth rate for the U.S. economy, Wells Fargo presents a rather pessimistic outlook.

Walt Disney reports Q3 results, and Morgan Stanley applauds them: Walt Disney Company DIS reported fourth-quarter revenue of $21.24 billion, a 5% year-over-year increase, albeit falling short of Street expectations. The company’s earnings per share of 82 cents surpassed the Street consensus estimate of 70 cents per share. Morgan Stanley analyst Benjamin Swinburne reiterated an Overweight rating on the stock. 

What To Watch In The Week Ahead: All eyes will be on the consumer price index report for October, scheduled for release Tuesday. Economists anticipate that core inflation will hold steady at 4.1% year-on-year. 

On Wednesday, the highlights will include the producer price index and retail sales data. Additionally, several Federal Reserve speakers are expected to provide insights throughout the week.

Upcoming Earnings To Watch: Among the mega-cap U.S. companies scheduled to announce earnings next week are Home Depot Inc. HD on Tuesday, Cisco Systems Inc. CSCO on Wednesday and Walmart Inc. WMT and Applied Materials Inc. AMAT on Thursday.

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