TheDrop Market Analysis, 02/18/25

Markets started off strong in a short trading week due to President's Day.

Investors in the New York Stock Exchange.

Although at first stocks initially looked poised to stagnancy, they rallied last-minute as investors bought in droves. The S&P rose 0.2%, while both the Dow and Nasdaq rose by <1%. The S&P index reached a record high today, while the Dow and Nasdaq made near all-time highs, showing the continued bullishness short-term of the market.

Amid policy speculation of rate cuts, tariffs, and other economic policies, investors pondered what would be best for the future. Some indicated the necessity of having high rates kept to maintain the growing inflation, while others hold on to their feelings of rate cuts being good for economic growth. Investors today clearly made on decision though: they are optimistic that the Fed will take the right path in its economy policy. Thus, as a preemptive reaction to the Fed's January Meeting minutes release on Wednesday morning, they bought in.

Intel, in unique fashion, rose by well over 15% after news of its partnership with Broadcom and TSMC; however, there are some fears emerging that this could result in possible legal challenges by the Trump administration. Nevertheless, the stock has rallied, and has continued to rally into after hours.

Other members of the Nasdaq went up along with it, which included Nvidia, Palantir, SoundHound, and others. Meanwhile, Apple and Tesla fell marginally as their rallying efforts begin to accumulate into more consolidation rather than an overperformance of the moving-average.

WeRide continued to rally on its Nvidia-led success, with an over 20% surge. SMCI, another smaller tech company, rose by a similar 16.4%. AI had a field day today, clearly.

MicroStrategy, however, had a worse-off today as the value of the USD and bitcoin shrank; gold, on the other hand, held on to its value firmly.