The main U.S. equity indexes opened mixed and shifted between red and green but are trending toward fresh all-time highs. President Donald Trump continues to expand the range of his tariffs, adding the country of Brazil to a list that now includes copper as well as “transshipments,” with duty details for pharmaceuticals, semiconductors and other targets yet to come.
“The broader market has continued its climb after breaking past the February highs late last month,” writes LPL Financial Chief Technical Strategist Adam Turnquist.
It’s a narrow rally, Turnquist notes, with Nvidia (NVDA), Microsoft (MSFT), Meta Platforms (META), Broadcom (AVGO) and Amazon.com (AMZN) accounting for more than half of the 5.2% total return for the S&P 500. At the same time, the technician suggests, “the composition of leadership remains bullish,” like the “big tech leads, and others follow” rallies in 2023 and 2024.
Subscribe to Kiplinger’s Personal Finance
Be a smarter, better informed investor.
Save up to 74%
Sign up for Kiplinger’s Free E-Newsletters
Profit and prosper with the best of expert advice on investing, taxes, retirement, personal finance and more – straight to your e-mail.
Profit and prosper with the best of expert advice – straight to your e-mail.
“With the Fed still on pause and geopolitical risk on the upswing, the S&P may find it difficult to meaningfully extend its rally off the April lows in the near future,” observes Daniel Skelly, who heads the Wealth Management Market Research & Strategy Team at Morgan Stanley.
Skelly does note differences between individual sectors and stocks. Industrial stocks, for example, are trading near all-time highs – a function, Skelly explains, of infrastructure spending to support the AI revolution as well as potential reshoring trends. Skelly also highlights defensive sectors such as health care and consumer staples stocks, which, because of lower tariff risk, could outperform consumer discretionary stocks “over the next three to four months.”
By the closing bell, the Nasdaq Composite had risen 0.1% to 20,630, the S&P 500 was up 0.3% at 6,280, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average had added 0.4% to 44,650.
Delta earnings take off
Delta Air Lines (DAL) soared once more Thursday after management reported better-than-forecast second-quarter results and reestablished full-year guidance – a true highlight on an earnings calendar that fills up for real next week.
DAL stock traded as high as $57.93 in pre-market action, gapped up at the opening bell and closed with a 12% gain.
Delta posted earnings of $2.10 per share on revenue of $15.5 billion vs FactSet-compiled consensus estimates of $2.06 and $15.5 billion, respectively.
“Reflecting our confidence in the business,” CEO Ed Bastian said in Delta’s earnings announcement, “we are restoring financial guidance.”
The airline expects full-year EPS of $5.25 to $6.25 per share and free cash flow (FCF) of $3 billion to $4 billion, in line with its long-term FCF target.
When management reported first-quarter results in April, it withdrew a 2025 forecast it had issued along with its fourth-quarter and 2024 numbers in January. Still, DAL stock was up nearly 25% that day – when President Trump announced his first post-Liberation Day tariff pause.
Initial jobless claims, continued
Investors, traders and speculators are more interested than ever in economic calendar events that could provide early warnings of impacts from Trump’s tariffs. Frequency makes the weekly initial jobless claims report a hot report now.
Initial claims declined by 5,000 to 227,000 during the week ending July 5, the Department of Labor reported before Thursday’s closing bell, with the previous week’s count revised lower by 1,000 to 232,000.
The four-week moving average ticked down to 235,500 from the previous week’s 241,250, which was revised lower by 250. Continuing claims increased by 10,000 to 1,965,000 during the week ending June 28, in line with consensus expectations.
“Private-sector businesses have done well to preserve margin by reducing labor costs via attrition, shorter hours and part-time employment to mitigate slack, rather than mass layoffs,” explains Jefferies Chief U.S. Economist Thomas Simons.
Simons says “this is mostly going to continue to be a theme going forward, but time may be running out on this strategy.”
Insecure valuation for CRWD
CrowdStrike (CRWD), one of the best tech stocks to buy because of its healthy growth profile, was down 5.1% Thursday. It’s fair to say fundamentals are fine, though, and the move appears to be particularly discrete.
CFRA Research analyst Janice Quek cut her rating on CRWD stock from Buy to Hold, but – and here’s the separate and distinct part – raised her 12-month target price from $517 to $555. CrowdStrike closed at $513.51 Wednesday, leaving an upside of 8.1% from Quek’s new target.
“CRWD remains one of our top picks in the cybersecurity space as a major beneficiary of enterprise consolidation through whole platform adoption,” Quek writes. She says CrowdStrike’s Falcon Flex sales model and IT budgets prioritizing AI will drive “sustained high growth rates in the longer term.”
Quek’s issue is valuation: It’s at a three-year high, at a forward enterprise value-to-sales ratio of 24.4 times following CRWD’s nearly 60% rally off its April lows.
“We see limited upside in the near term as expectations for second-half fiscal 2026 annual recurring revenue acceleration are priced in at this point,” the analyst concludes.
Quek also cites “lingering economic uncertainty,” its potential impact on the timing of new deals, and the weight of sentiment on the share price.