Navigating sell-offs and a volatile market: Catalysts
On today's episode of Catalysts, Co-hosts Seana Smith and Madison Mills provide key insight into the market volatility and how investors can best navigate it. The number of initial jobless claims filed for the week ending in August 3 fell to 233,000, coming in below the expected 240,000. The cooler-than-expected data is a sign of relief for investors after July's jobs report stoked recession fears and kicked off a three-day global market sell-off. Glenmede Chief of Investment Strategy and Research Jason Pride explains, "We had a little bit of an economic surprise that people are still, I think, deciphering that employment report. I mean, even today with the jobless claims numbers, people are kind of looking back and questioning, well, how do you reconcile these two?" Pride explains. Nvidia (NVDA) has fallen from its heights in June as the overall tech sector took a hit in the recent market sell-off. New Street Research technology infrastructure analyst Antoine Chkaiban believes that despite concerns around the macro-environment and a potential Blackwell delay, he still expects Nvidia to "remain dominate in a market that is growing very, very fast." He adds, "I think that for 2025... things are fairly well set. You can look at things from multiple angles. We talked about the hyperscalers' cap-ex earlier. We know roughly how much they expect to grow cap-ex. Plans are already set. They already have a plan to train the next generation of the GPT models and the next generation of Gemini models. I think here there's probably limited room for much changes in plans." Barclays has downgraded the retail sector to Neutral, explaining that promotions suggest "weakening demand." Barclays consumer discretionary senior analyst Adrienne Yih explains the reasoning behind the move, saying, "Last year, it was all about cleaning up the inventory. And so there were a ton of promotions last year, and rightfully so because these companies are trying to get rid of that inventory. We are seeing the same level of promoting now that the companies have clean inventory. So what that basically means is they're doing it for an entirely different reason," Yih explains. "They're doing it to drive and stimulate traffic and conversion. And that's clearly an indication that the consumer is very choiceful and pulling back." The volatility index (^VIX) has made major moves this week, spiking on Monday amid a large global sell-off. Ballast Rock Private Wealth senior wealth advisor and portfolio manager Jim Carroll argues, "Volatility does create opportunity because if you like the S&P at its July 16th high, then why wouldn't you like it better where it is now? And I think it goes to the timeframe. If you have patience, if you're a long-term investor and if you are blessed to have cash to put to work in an environment like this, these can be seen as opportunities to put some of that money to work for the long run." This post was written by Melanie Riehl
