Monday's Market Minute: Month-End Volatility

Headed into the last week of May, we’ve got lots for traders and investors to focus on in terms of potential market movers. Let’s take a market minute to get ahead of what to keep an eye on this week.

There’s been a lot of attention on commodities and the impact they’re having on the inflation narrative as prices continue to rise. This week I expect that to continue, as China has just stepped up efforts to stop hoarding, speculation, and the spread of fake news. Keep an eye on copper, crude prices, and other metals like iron ore and steel.

In terms of economic data, this week we have New Home Sales, Pending Home Sales, GDP, and Personal Income and Spending; all have the potential to create a bit of a stir. In terms of companies reporting quarterly results, things are starting to wind down a bit with 470 S&P 500 companies having already reported and some 87% beating expectations, but keep an eye on results from Best Buy BBY, Costco COST, Gap GPS, and Salesforce CRM.

We also have a couple trends and some recent market volatility to take a note of; it was a busy week for bitcoin last week, and with some of the price activity over the weekend in crypto, I expect that to continue. Keep an eye on the Indices as the Nasdaq and the Russell have struggled some relative to the S&P 500 and the Dow, which both posted new all-time highs in the month of May. Lastly, don’t forget as we head into Friday we could see some month-end activity, oftentimes as traders flatten out positions into the end of the month we can see added volatility and random price activity, so stay on your toes.

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