Market Memo

Alright, let’s get into it. The market spent this week trying to act confident while clearly second-guessing itself. Indexes hit big levels, headlines sounded bullish, and then one policy comment later everything got shaky. It was one of those weeks where the market wanted to rally, but only if nothing unexpected happened, which obviously didn’t work out. The Dow was doing its own thing and honestly didn’t care, pushing past 49,500 during the week and ending just under it around 49,442 as banks and industrial companies delivered strong earnings and investors happily rotated into safe, established names with steady profits and minimal drama. The S&P 500 tried to keep up, spending most of the week flirting with 7,000, briefly touching new highs before backing off and closing slightly lower around 6,944, which pretty much summed up the overall hesitation. Tech, however, finally got the memo that valuations matter, as the Nasdaq lagged all week with investors questioning the leftovers from last year’s AI hype, especially in semiconductors, and finished near 23,530. It’s nothing catastrophic, just a reminder that stocks can’t go up forever(sadly for your investments). The real chaos came from the Federal Reserve side of things, where comments about potential changes in Fed leadership sent markets scrambling to rethink the future path of interest rates, pushing bond yields higher and pressuring equities late in the week as everyone suddenly became a Fed expert again. Meanwhile, while stocks were busy arguing with themselves, commodities quietly went crazy, with gold climbing to 4,511 per ounce and silver hitting new record highs as investors rushed into safe-haven assets, which is usually a sign that at least some people are uncomfortable with what’s ahead. Overall, this wasn’t a bad week, but it definitely wasn’t smooth, and the market feels more cautious and a lot less patient than it did not too long ago.