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Briefing.com Summary:
*A key procedural vote in the Senate has laid some groundwork for a possible end to the government shutdown.
*NVIDIA and the mega-cap stocks are leading a broader buy-the-dip effort.
*The S&P 500 managed to hold above its 50-day moving average.
The stock market had its challenges last week, primarily because the mega-cap stocks and the growth stocks ran into selling pressure. However, it ended the week on an encouraging technical note, with the S&P 500 holding above its 50-day moving average on a closing basis on Friday.
The 50-day moving average is a key technical support level, but it has been particularly key during the run off the April lows. Specifically, it has been tested several times since April, but there has never been a close below the 50-day moving average since the recovery rally began in April.
It seems pretty unlikely that there will be a close below that key technical level today based on the news that is known now.
Currently, the S&P 500 futures are up 66 points and are trading 1.0% above fair value, the Nasdaq 100 futures are up 386 points and are trading 1.5% above fair value, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average futures are up 188 points and are trading 0.4% above fair value.
The main impetus for the positive disposition is the news that the Senate advanced a procedural measure by a vote of 60-40 to reopen and fund the government through January 30th. The deal will not include an extension of Obamacare subsidies, but Democrats were promised a future vote in December on that issue, according to the Washington Post.
This does not mean the government is reopened, yet it has been construed as a step toward that end, which may not come to pass (literally and figuratively) until the latter half of this week. Assuming there is a final vote that gets out of the Senate, the measure then goes back to the House for a vote.
Optimism that this deal gets done is running high in the stock market, which is why there is a pervasive buy-the-dip bid in many of last week's biggest losers, both in percentage terms and in market cap size.
NVIDIA (NVDA) is up 3.4% in pre-market action, with CEO Jensen Huang saying he expects strong demand for the company's Blackwell chips, Tesla (TSLA) is up 2.0%, and Microsoft (MSFT), riding an eight-session losing streak, is up 0.9%.
Those gains, and gains in other mega-cap stocks, explain the outperformance of the Nasdaq 100 futures and the upside bias for the broader market, which has also liked hearing that China has ended its ban on gallium, germanium, and antimony exports to the U.S., according to Reuters.
