History doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme.
The Iraq war of 2003 doesn’t have many parallels to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, other than perhaps global unpopularity. But there seems to be at least one parallel — how stocks have behaved, as this chart shows.
Joachim Klement, strategist at Liberum Capital in London, says if stocks were to continue the Iraq path, there would be sideways moves over the next 10 trading days but some 5% to 10% upside over the next two months.
The technical indicators, he says, indicate a continuation of the current recovery.
In Europe and the U.K., most stocks are still below their 200-day moving averages. In the U.S., it is about half — 51% of S&P 500 companies are below their 200-day average. “We are increasingly seeing these stocks catch up to the prices seen at the beginning of this year,” he says.
Investors are still pessimistic toward stocks in the U.K. and Europe, and while the U.S. measure has recovered, it has peaked due to inflation concerns, he added.
The chart
With commodities in the spotlight, it might be worth taking a long-term perspective. An equal-weighted index of 36 key commodities had a 100-year trend of declines, before reversing. “After the year 2000, the trend changed and prices began to rise under the pressure of unrelenting growth in China, whose global share of important commodities, such as iron ore, cement, and coal, rose to 50% by 2013 from around 5% in 1980, by far the most impressive leap in history,” says Jeremy Grantham, the co-founder and strategist of GMO. He says, “the long demand surge of global development will drive repeated commodity boom cycles for many decades to come.”
The buzz
The Senate is expected to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court.
New U.S. jobless claims fell to a 54-year low of 166,000 in mid-April — the second lowest reading in history. St. Louis Fed President James Bullard, who’s been the leading hawk at the central bank, said a generous reading of monetary policy rules shows the federal funds rate should be around 3.5%, versus the current range between 0.25% and 0.5%.
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway BRK revealed a stake worth over $4 billion in computer maker HP HPQ.
Shell SHEL said it would take up to $5 billion in impairments over its Russian arm.
SoFi Technologies SOFI cut its outlook following an extension of the federal student loan moratorium.
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives says this is the most oversold tech stocks have been since 2015.
The market
Shortly before the opening bell, U.S. stock futures ES00 NQ00 traded lower. There have been two days of losses for the S&P 500 SPX on concerns about Fed tightening.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury BX:TMUBMUSD10Y rose to 2.63%.
Top tickers
Here were the most active stock-market tickers as of 6 a.m. Eastern.
Ticker | Security name |
TSLA | Tesla |
GME | GameStop |
AMC | AMC Entertainment |
NIO | Nio |
MULN | Mullen Automotive |
AAPL | Apple |
NVDA | Nvidia |
DWAC | Digital World Acquisition Company |
TWTR | |
BABA | Alibaba |
Random reads
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Source: finance.yahoo.com