Provides a market roundup, a selection of useful data points we use for our investment analysis, and some interesting articles/charts we have noticed recently.
The major benchmarks ended mixed as investors watched carefully for signs of progress in negotiations over raising the federal debt ceiling. The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite outperformed and ended the week up 23.97% for the year-to-date period—a stark contrast to the 0.16% decline of the narrowly focused Dow Jones Industrial Average over the period. Similarly, the Russell 1000 Growth Index ended up 20.75% over the period, while the Russell 1000 Value Index—heavily weighted in the struggling financials sector—was down 1.64%. Markets were scheduled to be closed on Monday, May 29, in observance of Memorial Day.
Alongside the debt ceiling negotiations, the signal event in the week may have been Thursday’s 24% jump in the shares in chipmaker NVIDIA, which took the company’s market capitalization to roughly USD 963 billion by the end of the week and made it the sixth most highly valued public company in the world. Shares rose after the company beat consensus first-quarter earnings expectations by a wide margin and raised its profit outlook. The large move in such a heavily weighted stock reverberated throughout the major benchmark.
At home in Australia, amidst all the Sun Cable developments, the Australian share market finished slightly higher on Friday, but remained the worst weekly performance in two months. There's no shortage of big developments this week, with RBA governor Philip Lowe at Senate Estimates Committe on Wednesday — the same day as the latest inflation figures will be released. The latest data on house prices will also be out later in the week.
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