GDP had a big miss yesterday, coming in at 6.5%. Normally, that would be a great number, but when expectations were for 8.5%, that’s a huge miss. Pending home sales also came in weaker than expected, falling 1.9% for the month versus estimates for a gain of 0.3%—disappointing economic data across the board.
It didn’t stop the S&P 500 from rising because bad news is good news. Obviously, if the economy is weakening, the Fed can’t taper, right? Well, that’s not entirely true. The Fed can easily taper, the economy is still robust. The problem isn’t the economy; equity market valuations are too high to be supported by the weaker growth rates. Eventually, investors will realize that the Fed is about to embark on a tighter monetary policy, just as economic growth is normalizing to lower growth rates, while valuations are at historically very high levels.
S&P 500
The S&P 500 (NYSE:SPY) hit resistance at the trend line and failed to hold it and not make a closing high. The momentum trends are still diverging, with the Advance/decline, RSI, and MACD all trending lower. At this point, I think we test the 50-day moving average at a minimum.
S&P 500 Equal Weight
Meanwhile, the equal-weight S&P 500® Equal Weight ETF (NYSE:RSP) tried to break out. Technically, it had a new closing high, but this is just too close to call. We need confirmation of a breakout.
Amazon
Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) reported results, with earnings beating but missing on revenue by almost 2%. On top of that, the company guided third-quarter revenue to $109 billion at the midpoint of the range vs. estimates of nearly $119 billion. AWS had revenue of $14.8 billion, which came in line with the high end of estimates. This is a big problem, when the street thought Amazon was going to grow revenue by almost 24% in the third quarter and guidance is for growth of around 14%, after growing by 27% in the second quarter. This will not be a one-day drop.
Anyway, we knew bad things tend to happen when the stock RSI reaches a level near 80. The next level of support is around 3150.
Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) was down 5% following its results yesterday.The stock has a gap that needs to be filled at $355 which should offer some support.
