US Stocks Extend Rally As Traders Eye Peak Rates: Markets Wrap

(Bloomberg) -- Technology shares extended the week’s US stocks rally after a key measure of inflation cooled last month, suggesting the Federal Reserve may be close to ending its rate-hiking campaign. Treasuries rose.

Excluding food and energy, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge — the personal consumption expenditures price index — rose 0.3% in February, slightly below the median estimate. Meanwhile, the PCE price index was up 5% from a year earlier, a deceleration from January but far higher than the Fed’s 2% goal.

The S&P 500 rose  — bringing its weekly gains to 3.5%, the most since November — while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 gained , helping it to notch its biggest quarterly gain since June 2020. 

“Overall, it was a round of data consistent with the peak inflation narrative but also with the Fed’s insistence that there remains work to be done to re-establish price stability,” Ian Lyngen of BMO Capital Markets wrote in a note.

Treasuries also ended the quarter of wild swings higher on Friday as investors struggled to adjust for recent bank failures and the shifting outlook for interest rates. The two-year yield fell to around % Friday while the 10-year maturity dipped to %. The dollar strengthened against major peers.

“The S&P 500 has done well to recover from banking sector concerns over the past few weeks,” wrote Michael Gibbs, director of equity portfolio and technical strategy at Raymond James. “However, the rally has been a bit more uneven beneath the surface, reflecting the confusion inherent within the current backdrop.”

While technology stocks have risen to the highest since August 2022 — propelling gains in the broader market — the percentage of stocks above their 50-day moving average has contracted, Gibbs said. Only a small number of shares actually account for the US rally. 

“Extremely narrow rallies are not healthy ones at all, so it is going to be essential for the bulls to see more groups participate in the rally going forward,” Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak + Co., wrote. “If they don’t, it will only be a matter of time before a correction in the big-cap tech names turns this nice rally into an ugly decline.”

Citigroup Inc. strategists said the focus among investors is set to shift from worries about high interest rates to the risks of a recession, and as that happens, US stocks look more attractive than those in Europe.

A Citi team led by Beata Manthey upgraded US stocks to overweight from underweight on Friday as they “perform more defensively than other markets” during earnings recessions. They expect global earnings-per-share to contract 5% in 2023 and say that analysts are likely to slash profit estimates even further. 

Elsewhere in markets, oil traded in New York saw a weekly gain of 9% amid ongoing disruption to Iraqi exports. Bitcoin notched its best quarter since March 2021 with a gain of about 70%. And Digital World Acquisition Corp., the blank-check firm taking Donald Trump’s media company public, rallied after he became the first former president to be indicted.

Some of the main moves in markets:

Stocks

• The S&P 500 rose 1.4% as of 4:04 p.m. New York time
• The Nasdaq 100 rose 1.7%
• The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.3%
• The MSCI World index rose 0.7%

Currencies

• The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index rose 0.2%
• The euro fell 0.6% to $1.0844
• The British pound fell 0.4% to $1.2334
• The Japanese yen was little changed at 132.76 per dollar

Cryptocurrencies

• Bitcoin rose 0.9% to $28,416.49
• Ether rose 1.7% to $1,826.2

Bonds

• The yield on 10-year Treasuries declined eight basis points to 3.47%
• Germany’s 10-year yield declined eight basis points to 2.29%
• Britain’s 10-year yield declined three basis points to 3.49%

Commodities

• West Texas Intermediate crude rose 1.6% to $75.56 a barrel
• Gold futures fell 0.5% to $1,987.50 an ounce

This story was produced with the assistance of Bloomberg Automation.

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