Customers at a Tesla store in Shanghai, China, September 5, 2023.
Costfoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
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Markets’ tech-powered surge
U.S. markets traded higher Monday. The Nasdaq Composite rallied, buoyed by a bounce in tech stocks. The pan-European Stoxx 600 added 0.34%, with all major bourses closing in the green. Meanwhile, the European Commission revised its growth forecast for the European Union down from 1% to 0.8%.
‘A huge mistake’
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said it’d be “a huge mistake” to think the U.S. economy will boom for years. The economy’s currently supported by a strong consumer, but tighter monetary policy, the Ukraine war and governments “spending like drunken sailors” pose risks. “Things change, and we don’t know what the full effect of all this is going to be 12 or 18 months from now,” Dimon said.
Back to Qualcomm
Qualcomm shares jumped nearly 4% after the company said it will supply Apple with 5G modems for smartphones through 2026. Qualcomm’s CEO Cristiano Amon previously said Apple’s transitioning to an in-house chip from 2024. Apple contributed about 21% of Qualcomm’s fiscal 2022 revenue of $44.2 billion, according to a UBS estimate.
Only European economy to contract
Germany is likely the only major European economy to contract this year, according to fresh forecasts by the European Commission. The commission predicts Germany’s economy to shrink 0.4% this year; the International Monetary Fund puts that figure at 0.3%. Hans-Werner Sinn, president emeritus at the Ifo institute, previously described the country as “the sick man of Europe.”
[PRO] Supercharging Tesla
Morgan Stanley’s widely followed auto analyst Adam Jonas thinks Tesla is on the verge of a technological breakthrough. Hence, Jonas upgraded Tesla to a top pick and updated his price target for the electric vehicle company, implying an upside of more than 60%.
Technology stocks staged a comeback, helped by a barrage of good news.
Tesla surged more than 10% after Morgan Stanley upgraded the stock. Meta popped 3.25% as the Wall Street Journal reported the company’s developing a new artificial intelligence system as advanced as OpenAI’s model. Qualcomm jumped almost 4% on the news that it will continue supplying Apple with modems through 2026.
Those moves supercharged the Nasdaq Composite, giving it a 1.14% increase. The S&P 500 rose 0.67% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.25%, helped by a 1.2% rise in Walt Disney shares after the media giant reached a deal with Charter Communications.
Notably, tech stocks rallied even as the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield climbed around nine basis points to 4.294%. Higher bond yields typically weigh down growth-focused tech stocks because they increase the cost of borrowing and lower the value of future earnings. But tech stocks defied that relationship Monday.
“As investors become more comfortable with a higher rate environment, yields on 10-year Treasuries may not need to fall back into the 3′s for longer duration assets to work,” Goldman Sachs wrote. “Indeed, yields on 10-year Treasuries ranged between 4.5% and 7% back in the late-1990′s in the years when the Nasdaq posted significant outsized gains (CPI inflation was also in a similar range as today, if not lower),” the note continued.
Still, traders might not need to worry about yields hitting an eye-opening 7%, going by a report in the Wall Street Journal. It said Federal Reserve officials are feeling less urgency to raise interest rates as inflation cools down. If true, that means it’s unlikely yields will rise too dramatically, giving stocks more room to breathe.
That’s a big “if,” however. The consumer and producer price indexes, coming out later this week, will put that hypothesis to the test.
