Israel-Iran attacks and the 2 other things that drove the stock market this
What was shaping up to be a relatively calm week quickly got volatile on Friday, following Israel’s overnight strike on Iran. Here is a closer look at the three biggest themes that defined the market this week. 1. Geopolitics: The attack on Iranian nuclear infrastructure rippled through financial markets on Friday. U.S. stocks sold off on the increased tensions overseas. The S & P 500 and Nasdaq Composite tumbled 1.13% and 1.3% on Friday, respectively. Meanwhile, Brent crude futures and West Texas Intermediate crude futures added around 7% and 7.5%, respectively. Gold rose to a two-month high, as well, as investors see it as a safe haven from all the volatility. Prior to the attack, stock benchmark were on track to close the week in the positive. Instead, the S & P 500 and Nasdaq lost 0.4% and 0.6% over that stretch, snapping back-to-back weekly wining streaks. Despite a modest gain Friday, part of the safe-haven trade, the U.S. dollar index had a tough week. On Thursday, we wrote about how long-term fundamental investors should view the weaker dollar. Another big geopolitical event for investors was an announcement by U.S. and Chinese delegations that the two sides agreed on a trade-deal framework, particularly focused on rare-earth minerals. 2. Economic data: Investors received good news on the inflation front on Wednesday and Thursday. On Wednesday, the c onsumer price index, a measure of goods and services inflation across the U.S. economy, showed that core prices rose less that expected last month. The May producer price index , a gauge of wholesale inflation in the country, came in lower than expected Thursday, too. The labor market continued to show it was softening but not breaking. Weekly jobless claims for the week ending June 7 were unchanged, while continuing claims were still at multiyear highs. On the whole, the batch of economic data was encouraging as the rate of inflation subsides and unemployment remains low, providing the consumer with more buying power. 3. AI updates: It was also a week chock full of company specific news and events within the generative artificial intelligence race. AI remains one of the most important, if not the most important, drivers for financial markets. On Monday, we heard from Apple, when the company hosted its annual worldwide developer conference. Though expectations were about as muted as we’ve ever seen, the event still managed to disappoint due to the lack of AI updates. Meta Platforms, on the other hand, got investors excited this week when news broke that the company took a large investment in Scale AI and will bring the startup’s CEO on board to help start a new “superintelligence” unit within the company with the goal of achieving artificial general intelligence. Early Wednesday morning, we heard from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who spoke at the company’s GTC event in Paris. While there weren’t many new updates, Huang reaffirmed that there is still a lot more accelerated compute capacity…
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