markets

Luke Kawa6/14/24

Record divergence in US stock market shows what happens when it’s AI vs the economy

The 1.6% advance for the S&P 500 – the benchmark US stock index – disguises an uncomfortable truth: this week was a bad one for most stocks in the market.

The Invesco S&P 500 equal weight ETF (RSP), which treats Apple like it’s just as important as International Paper Co., fell 0.5% this week while the S&P 500 market cap weighted ETF (SPY) posted a solid gain.

This kind of divergence –— equal weight down at least 0.5% and market cap up 1.5% or more — has never happened in the history of these products, going back to Q2 2003. The 2 percentage point plus gap between the two is also in the 99th percentile over their more than 20-year history.

There were dribs and drabs of less-than-stellar economic news this week that weighed on cyclical parts of the market. Consumer sentiment unexpectedly fell. A surprise jump in US initial jobless claims. A significant build in oil inventories.

And of course, French political turmoil played a part. Since European economies are generally more levered to manufacturing, concerns about there tend to have a bigger negative impact US industrials compared to internet platform companies.

Meanwhile, the market cap index is overweight areas of the economy that (right now!) aren’t being driven by the perceived ebbs and flows of the business cycle. Think Broadcom’s blowout quarter on robust chip demand, or investors deciding they were on board with Apple’s AI strategy after all.

The good news: there’s much more money invested in market cap indexes than their equal-weight counterparts. And your gains still count, even when breadth is terrible.

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Matt Phillips2h

DraftKings moves to counter prediction market threat

DraftKings rose after hours, following news that it is buying Railbird in an effort to address the competitive threat from prediction markets that has weighed on its share price — and that of FanDuel parent Flutter Entertainment — for weeks.

The deal is then latest example of the increasing linkages and overlap between worlds of financial markets, gambling, and prediction markets.

Earlier this month, ICE — the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange and the ICE futures markets, among others — announced it would invest up to $2 billion in prediction markets company Polymarket.

And Robinhood shares have recently gotten a lift from its ongoing partnership with prediction market platform Kalshi, which has seen growing uptake of its events contracts that allow buyers to take positions on football games.

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions.)

By and large investor excitement over prediction markets — which has picked up since the start of football season — has seemed to come at the expense of Flutter and DraftKings, the two companies that dominate US sports betting.

Over the last three months through the end of regular trading on Wednesday, DraftKings and Flutter were down 23% and 18%, respectively, while the S&P 500 is up about 7%.

DraftKings acquires predictions platform Railbird

DraftKings acquires predictions platform Railbird

The deal is then latest example of the increasing linkages and overlap between worlds of financial markets, gambling, and prediction markets.

Earlier this month, ICE — the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange and the ICE futures markets, among others — announced it would invest up to $2 billion in prediction markets company Polymarket.

And Robinhood shares have recently gotten a lift from its ongoing partnership with prediction market platform Kalshi, which has seen growing uptake of its events contracts that allow buyers to take positions on football games.

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions.)

By and large investor excitement over prediction markets — which has picked up since the start of football season — has seemed to come at the expense of Flutter and DraftKings, the two companies that dominate US sports betting.

Over the last three months through the end of regular trading on Wednesday, DraftKings and Flutter were down 23% and 18%, respectively, while the S&P 500 is up about 7%.

As Netflix drops on earnings miss, it’s investing just $0.40 into content for every $1 of revenue

Netflix shares fell in after-hours trading on Tuesday, following the release of the streamer’s third-quarter earnings report.

Toby Bochan, Luke Kawa

US stocks go nowhere amid big rotation out of gold and into fake meat

The calmest session for the S&P 500 in over a month.

a sunny field

OpenAI releases Chrome-competitor browser “ChatGPT Atlas,” sending Google shares down

ChatGPT currently poses little threat to Google’s search business, but an OpenAI browser — and the data that comes with it — could change everything.

Screenshot of ChatGPT Atlas browser

markets

The no-fundamentals, high-volatility winning trades are reversing hard

The volatile, speculative momentum trades that have been on fire in recent months are getting smoked.

The SPDR Gold Shares ETF is on track for its biggest daily loss since April 2013, as of 10:28 a.m. ET.

And Goldman Sachs’ baskets of “high beta momentum longs” and “non-profitable tech” stocks, which have pretty much been the exact same line for two months, got dumped last Thursday and are down big again today.

D-Wave Quantum, Planet Labs, and Navitas Semiconductor are some of the stocks that feature in both of Goldman’s baskets and are down more than 2% as of 10:24 a.m. ET.

All of these groups have been handily outperforming the S&P 500 for an extended period of time despite by their very nature having more hype than actual track records — in terms of producing profits for shareholders — to speak of. Gold, obviously, generates no income. Nonprofitable tech stocks aren’t really in a position to spin off cash they don’t have to their owners. And, as mentioned, high-beta momentum and nonprofitable tech stocks have pretty much traded the same!

It’s difficult to pinpoint a fundamental catalyst for why speculative momentum trades suddenly turn on a dime, just as it’s often tricky to identify why they went on such a mammoth run in the first place. Perhaps the onset of earnings season — which gives us the opportunity to assess fundamental progress — means that right now, there’s more attention being paid to “line go up” when it comes to revenues and profits, and that’s taking away from the mindshare on “line go up” with respect to recent share price performance.

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