MARKET COMMENTARY
Market Wrap: Stocks, Bonds, Commodities
On Friday, U.S. stocks advanced closed higher. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 176 points (+0.50%) to 35,459, the S&P 500 climbed 44 points (+0.99%) to 4,582, and the Nasdaq 100 was up 286 points (+1.85%) to 15,750.
Investors saw U.S. inflation moderate and the Bank of Japan tweak its monetary policy.
U.S. data showed that the core personal consumption expenditure (PCE) price index's growth slowed to 4.1% on year in June, the smallest increase since September 2021.
The Bank of Japan said it will offer to buy 10-year Japanese government bonds (JGBs) at 1.0% through fixed-rate operations, signaling that it could tolerate a rise in the 10-year yield to as much as 1.0%, compared to 0.5% previously.
The U.S. 10-year Treasury yield dipped back to levels below 4%.
Automobiles (+3.09%), media (+2.48%), and household & personal products (+2.04%) stock sectors led the market higher Friday.
Meta Platforms (META) rose 4.42%, Tesla (TSLA) climbed 4.20%, Amazon.com (AMZN) advanced 3.09%, Alphabet (GOOGL) gained 2.46%, Microsoft (MSFT) added 2.31%, and Apple (AAPL) was up 1.35%.
Palantir Technologies (PLTR), a data mining company, surged 10.28%.
After posting satisfactory quarterly results, Roku (ROKU) soared 31.41%, Intel (INTC) rose 6.60%, and Procter & Gamble (PG) added 2.83%.
On the other hand, Enphase Energy (ENPH) fell 7.48% and Ford Motor (F) dropped 3.42% after reporting results.
In Europe, the DAX 40 rose 0.39%, the CAC 40 gained 0.15%, and the FTSE 100 edged up 0.02%.
U.S. WTI crude futures increased $0.49 to $80.58 a barrel. On a weekly basis, oil prices posted a five-week winning streak.
Gold price rebound $13 to $1,959 an ounce.
Market Wrap: Forex
The yen saw volatile trading on Friday after the Bank of Japan seemed to allow a higher 10-year Japanese government bond yield. And as expected, the central bank kept its key interest rate unchanged at -0.100%. USD/JPY slid 161 pips to 141.09.
This morning, Japan's data showed that retail sales declined 0.4% on month in June (vs +0.8% expected), while industrial production was up 2.0% on month (vs +2.1% expected).
EUR/USD rose 42 pips to 1.1021. The Eurozone's economic sentiment index declined to 94.5 in July (vs 94.0 expected).
Germany's data showed no growth in gross domestic product in the second quarter (vs +0.3% on quarter expected), and the inflation rate slowed to 6.2% on year in July (vs 6.1% expected).
France's gross domestic product grew 0.5% on quarter in the second quarter (vs +0.1% expected), and its inflation rate slowed to 4.3% on year in July (as expected).
GBP/USD gained 58 pips to 1.2854.
AUD/USD slid 56 pips to 0.6653.
USD/CHF added 7 pips to 0.8698.
USD/CAD increased 10 pips to 1.3234. Canada's data showed that gross domestic product grew 0.3% on month in May (vs +0.4% expected).
Bitcoin kept trading within a tight range between $29,100 and $29,500.