Tuesday’s stock trading direction will have little meaning until tomorrow. The BLS will report U.S. April 2024 inflation. Markets are bracing for rates to fall by only 10 bps. A bigger drop in inflation may boost the S&P 500 (SPY), Nasdaq (QQQ), and Russell 2000 (IWM) to new highs.
Lower rates of inflation would increase the chance of the Fed cutting interest rates in 2024. Currently, the central bank has no reason to do anything.
Trade Wars
Solar energy stocks like SunPower (SPWR) gained 19.6% ahead of the U.S. government’s announcement of new tariffs against China. President Biden had kept all of the Trump Administration levies on around $370 billion of annually imported goods from China.
The U.S. is keen to limit the import of solar panels and electric vehicles. This benefits domestic firms in those industries. Tesla (TSLA), which bottomed at $140 in 2024, benefits the most. It would face less competition from inexpensive Chinese EVs that could potentially put it out of business.
In the AI sector, OpenAI announced GPT-4o. The update will open the AI Chabot to everyone, giving them free access. Version GPT-4o (where “O” stands for omni), will support 50 different languages. The new model also has audio (voice) capabilities.
People have used voice-based assistants before. Amazon (AMZN) has Alexa while Apple (AAPL) has Siri.
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