Today’s Market Wrap Up and a Glimpse Into Friday

Stocks were mixed once again today, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average extending yesterday’s gains while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq ended slightly lower. The major indices remain within a stone’s throw of yet more records, but investors played it cautious amid more inflation talk out of the Federal Reserve.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell expects that inflation will remain at lofty levels in the coming months before retreating. Investors are also worried about the fallout from the COVID-19 variant due to a surge in the number of cases, as it could trigger another round of lockdowns. The result is uncertainty, something that investors are not a fan of.

On a positive note, the number of jobless claims declined in June, as expected, to 360,000 from 386,000 in the previous week. Separately, bond king Jeffrey Gundlach, who is at the helm of DoubleLine Capital, warned on CNBC that the USD is doomed and will decline “pretty substantially” in the “intermediate-term” due to deficits.

Stocks to Watch

PayPal has bolstered its weekly cryptocurrency purchase cap to USD 100K. So far the stock is not reacting and is down fractionally in extended-hours trading.

On the meme stock front, AMC Entertainment regained some ground, rising close to 8% on the day. The stock is up another 8% in after-hours trading as investors look to turn what has been a sinking ship lately around.

GameStop shares were under pressure during the regular session as Netflix strengthens its gaming offering. Shares of GameStop took back some ground in the extended hours, however, gaining 3%. The company announced that investors could pre-order the Nintendo Switch OLED, which will make its debut in October.

Twitter is gearing up for its earnings report this week. Investors punished the stock as the company tweaks its timeline dashboard. Investors celebrated Jack Dorsey’s other company, Square. Dorsey revealed that Square is building an “open developer platform” dedicated to bitcoin.

Square is creating a new business (joining Seller, Cash App, & Tidal) focused on building an open developer platform with the sole goal of making it easy to create non-custodial, permissionless, and decentralized financial services. Our primary focus is #Bitcoin. Its name is TBD.

— jack (@jack) July 15, 2021

Look Ahead

Retail sales for June are due out at 8:30 a.m. ET after falling 1.3% in May. Wells Fargo economists predict that retail sales climbed higher by 0.5%, excluding autos, in June. They are keeping an eye on spending trends at restaurants and bars to gauge the strength of the recovery in the services segment.