It was a slow session yesterday, but a much-needed break from the topsy-turvy gyrations that have already made 2025 a year that will require learning. Investors sought the comfort of traditional safe havens, but there were no real disasters.

Market breadth was even, although up volume on the NASDAQ Composite remains the story.

Market Breadth	NYSE	NASDAQ
Advancers	1,049	2,060
Decliners	1,690	2,353
New Highs	80	138
New Lows	14	53
Up Volume	1.63 billion	4.73 billion
Down Volume	1.90 billion	3.52 billion

Positive Developments

The stock market is sending a message that the experts were wrong about the degree of stress the economy faces from higher tariffs. The Philly Fed Service survey was a step in that direction, as future activities popped nicely, and price growth reversed substantially.

Speaking of harbingers of things to come, global fund managers are looking good with their top overweight and underweight positions. However, the rest of the positioning is offside, meaning assets must be corrected soon, or fund managers will have to make significant changes.

Today’s Session

As a boxing fan I’ve always been fascinated by the ebbs and flows of a fight, where it seems like each boxer allows the other to wail away as they cover up, and then they wail away, as their opponent goes into a defensive shell. 

This even happens when one fighter has superior skills and is the overall favorite – hence the occasional “lucky punch.”

The S&P 500 saw its winning streak snapped, after six straight sessions, and now the bears are back on the attack.

Today’s ammo:

Target (TGT) financial report was an unmitigated disaster.

•    Missed consensus on Revenue by $500 million
•    Missed consensus on Earnings by $0.35
•    Issues Lower Guidance 

Headlines warn this is a proxy for the state of consumers, as well as, an indictment of tariffs and the administration pushback against DEI.

Only Yahoo Finance alluded to the real story about Target (TGT).

The company has made a string of mistakes that goes back several years. 

Coming into the session, the stock was already down 58% from the peak as its market cap shrank to $45 billion from $131 billion.

The other story is more impactful and that’s the US 10-year treasury yield. On that note, there seems to be a global phenomenon with spiking yields that is unnerving. 

Comments

what ever happened to sell in May? not a mention of it anywhere. charles morden on 5/21/2025 10:21:11 AM

Three things are so discouraging now. First, we have Powell leading the Fed that was 10 months late to raise rates the result being our markets were crushed repeatedly over the past few years with NO adjustment of the clearly flawed metrics they use for decisions making their assessments late again to lower rates. The estimate that tariffs are inflationary is one sided not counting the new markets he is opening to the US and the supply side benefits as deflationary. Second we have the CBO's flawed inaccurate scoring with no addition for tariff revenue more than paying for the tax cuts and any dynamic scoring of increased revenue from marginal tax cuts. And thirdly we have the forever communication challenged conservatives not understanding the dynamic scoring power of tax cuts from Reagan's history and the benefits of the substantial revenue from the tariffs that at a minimum will more than pay for the tax cuts allowing themselves to be cornered and weakened in fights they should be able to easily emerge victorioius. The real question for me is, other than Trump, can we recover from the previous moves toward socialism and return to the success of capitalism and thrive in the leadership vacuum that prevails in our Republic. Charles R Weldon on 5/23/2025 10:24:07 AM

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