Hello and warm welcome to Market Domination Overtime. Stocks ending the week on a high note after a bruising tech selloff this week. The Dow hitting a milestone. And let's kick it over to Yahoo Finance's Ines with the trading action. 50,000. We did it in the Dow.
That's right. 50,000 in the Dow, up more than 2% for today. A record for the Dow. Look, I was on the floor of the stock exchange when we were going to 40,000, now 50,000. I mean, these are coming quicker and quicker, it seems. Over on the NASDAQ up more than 2% and the S&P 500 also about 2%. A sharp rebound is what we've been seeing really from this volatile week that we had. Taking under the hood at the sector action, we're going to pull up technology stocks, industrials, and materials which are leading, which have led the gains today. Also, just taking a look at the 5-day chart. So, you can see some of the rotation that was going on this week into consumer staples, industrials, and materials as we've seen that rotation throughout really January. Taking a look at the Dow and you can see there the names that really led the Dow higher. Nvidia, Walmart, JP Morgan, Amazon down more than 5% but cutting its losses from earlier when we opened this morning. And over on the NASDAQ 100, you can see a mixed picture there for the MAG 7 with Meta and Alphabet that are lower and Amazon as I just mentioned. But take a look at Broadcom up more than 7% for Broadcom. AMD, the semiconductors, tech really leading today. I do want to point out some of the software stocks that we saw earlier today. A little bit of a bounce there. Software really got hit this week. And what also got hit this week, which rebounded sharply today, is Bitcoin. Bitcoin up more than 10% just making a $10,000 dollar move per token over the last 24 hours really because you saw the lows at 61,000. Ethereum also up more than 10% for the session as well just hovering above 2,000. So quite a big comeback for crypto although some strategists are saying we may not have seen the low yet because we are in a downward trend when it comes to crypto.
Wise words there and we'll keep that in mind. Thank you Ines for that report. And a major snapback for markets on Friday. The Dow closing above 50,000 for the first time ever. Joining me now is Brad Conger, Hurdle Callahan, chief investment officer. Brad, thank you for joining here today. I'd love to get your hot take on the market action this week. So you know, we got some headlines about the Dow over 50,000. S&P 500 almost at a record high but serious problems in tech and they're not quite over yet it seems.
Yeah. And it's also very dispersed and very distinct sort of a repricing of expectations. So hyperscalers if you think of them as the center of the ecosystem are down on the week. All of their suppliers basically semiconductors and power and storage and so forth are up and then the downstream clients of the hyperscalers the software companies application software are down. So really it's interesting that the market has started to question the long-term returns for the hyperscalers basically selling compute and the investment in of new capital. But it's not being reflected in the hardware suppliers to those businesses. They're counting the money as spent.
Well, if we could go to the Wi-Fi interactive for a second, I want to make a point here. In January, we saw a huge surge in consumer staples. And here we have the year-to-date performance for the large cap sectors. Number one is energy. And then staples. I was just talking about that. That's up 13.2%. That's number three. Materials is a gold and silver story arguably, and copper, too. Then we got industrials, that's cyclical. But then we got real estate, healthcare, utilities, and then you're going to see down here those mega cap sectors. They're all in the red. So what do you make of this rotation out of those AI leaders and into some of the more defensive names if not in the company of some of these more cyclical names as well?
So you can certainly think that what we're seeing is a change of leadership from AI technology into I would say real economy names like you mentioned the cyclicals, materials, oil, industrials and that's been going on since about before Thanksgiving. And I think it suggests that people are derisking their portfolios a little bit. They're taking out the highest beta names and they are migrating into what they view as participants in overall economic growth without with less bet on a technology marvel or revolution.
What do you think this says about the rest of 2026 then?
I think it's going to be very volatile because we have geopolitics and an upcoming midterm. You've got a lot of uncertainty over the job market. We had a couple of pieces of data this week which suggested that the job market is slower than we thought. And therefore that makes it hard for the Fed to focus on inflation at all. We have a new Fed chair. So I would say the overarching theme for this year is going to be volatility which puts a premium on being very comfortable with the names that you have and understanding that they're going to be down. For example, software holders figured out that their names are not invincible over the past month and a half. And they can lose money even in great companies. The only real impairment of value is when you sell due to something that is transient and give up real long-term value.
I want to go big picture now because I was reading your notes earlier and you've hit on something that I have to agree with. There's a lot of crowded thinking in the investment community from portfolio managers to analysts etc. Where do you think this goes from here? Because it didn't necessarily used to be this way. You had more contrarians, it seems to me, in the past.
Yeah. And the problem is that anybody who had a contrarian outlook or bias in their investing has tended to fade the things that have worked since 2013. And so to a large extent, the contrarians are out of business. They lost their capital. And the market voted with their feet in favor of people who are following trends and extrapolating because extrapolation has worked. Companies have really increased the length, the duration and the magnitude of their moat over the past 10 years. I think that all things come to an end and I think when the constituency of the buyer base sort of coalesces around a received narrative, a kind of received wisdom and become very comfortable like we saw in software since the start of the year, they do so at their own hazard.
And here's another kind of big picture question that I think is relevant right now. Since the pandemic, I mean, you think about that March 20th pandemic selloff and then rebound to all-time highs in a very short period of time. We saw that even quicker in last April. And it just seems like the investing public is now kind of conditioned to believe that these wipeouts, that they're just going to be short-lived. And what do you think that means? How does that play out when we have a longer downturn?
It's going to make the, so first of all it makes the market more stable because people are convinced that there's a Trump put or a Fed put or some put on the market so that whenever markets are dislocated even temporarily, somebody from the administration comes out makes a soothing remark or the Fed indicates that they'll quit their QT and maybe start QE again. But as you suggested ultimately reality will hit and it makes the dawning of that reality much more painful.
I hear you there. It's been great chatting with you. Thanks for spending some time with us Brad.
And turning now to the Fed as Vice Chair Philip Jefferson shares a hawkish tone on interest rates. We have Yahoo Finance's Jennifer Schonberger now with the latest. What is the latest Jen?
Hey there Jared. Good to see you. Happy Friday. Yeah, we heard from vice chair of Federal Reserve Philip Jefferson earlier today who says that he sees the Fed's benchmark interest rate in the broad range of estimates for neutral. That's a level designed to neither spur nor slow economic growth. He says he's closely looking at the economic data for any additional rate cuts this year. Speaking earlier this afternoon at the Brookings Institution in Washington, Jefferson said, quote, 'The current policy stance is well positioned to address the risks to both sides of our dual mandate.' He went on to say, 'Our policy stance should help stabilize the labor market while allowing inflation to resume its decline toward our 2% target.' Now, Jefferson painted a nice picture for the year ahead, raising his outlook for the economy on signs of resilience. He now sees GDP in the range of 2.2%, which is about in line with what we saw last year. Though, he noted that inflation has stalled over the past year on account of tariffs. He expects inflation to resume dropping once tariffs have worked their way through goods prices. Now, when it comes to the job market, he sees signs of stabilization. And while he cautioned that he still sees some downside risks to growth there, he thinks the unemployment rate is going to hold approximately steady in the range of where it is right now at 4.4%. Now, elsewhere today, we also heard from San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly, who posted on LinkedIn that she still has concerns about the strength of the job market. She noted that the low hire low fire environment could persist but then added that she knows workers are aware that things could change quickly leaving them in what she called the no hiring more firing labor market. Daly saying quote with inflation printing above the Fed's 2% goal this rightly feels precarious. Jared I'm sort of inferring there that Daly has some concerns about the job market. Perhaps she sees some more room to cut there. Back to you.
And one more question here. Stick with me. What about concerns over Kevin Warsh? I know we got a heavy Fed calendar next week in terms of speeches, but have we heard anything on that front this week?
I'm so glad you asked that because the economics department at Duke University just did a survey of former Fed officials and former Fed staffers and found that two-thirds actually support Warsh's nomination. They say that he's got great institutional knowledge. They acknowledge that, you know, he was there during the 2008 financial crisis. Though some did express some concern about Warsh's past criticism of central bank policies, while others argued that Warsh was mistaken on key policy issues when he was a Fed governor. As for his loyalties to President Trump when he is confirmed for the chair if and when, participants were unsure about that point. Jared.
Yeah. And I believe he was the youngest Fed governor at least at the time over the financial crisis in 2008. All right. Thank you for that report, Jen.
