What Comes Next
It’s been an exciting week.
It didn’t finish up there, but the Dow Jones Industrial Average entered previously unexplored territory on Thursday.For the first time ever, the Dow crossed the 40,000 mark, floated by fresh rate-cut hope.
All the major indexes flirted with new highs before sagging into the closing bell, even as the biggest retailer in the world posted another quarter of expectations-beating financial and operating results.
Carl Quintinilla of CNBC shared a nice table on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter breaking down responsibility for the Dow’s rise from 30,000 in October 2022.
The outlier – the only component with a negative contribution to the Dow during the relevant time frame – announced a major acquisition on Thursday.
Johnson & Johnson $JNJ is buying privately held Proteologix for $850 million in cash. Proteologix's experimental eczema treatments are in various stages of development.
JNJ has been burdened by the uncertainty of thousands of lawsuits alleging its talc products contain asbestos and cause ovarian cancer.
The stock was up 1.02 percent on the deal news but is down more than 12 percent since reaching a 52-week high of $175.36 last July 28.
Nvidia $NVDA closed down 0.29 percent on Thursday but is within 3.22 percent of its all-time high of $974, reached during the trading day on March 8.
The chipmaker will report its fiscal first-quarter financial and operating results next Wednesday, the last of “The Magnificent Seven” to do so this season.
That event seems like kind of a big deal, given recent price action at a general as well as a specific level. The S&P 500 did hit a new all-time high as recently as Wednesday.
As the saying goes and a whole lot of data supports, nothing is more bullish than new all-time highs.
We’ll see whether NVDA catalyzes the next leg higher next week or causes what will inevitably prove to be just a pause on the way up and to the right.
