Stock Market Recap: Positive Close Could Lead to Bullish Week

All of the three major indexes closed up at the start of the weekend, indicating an opportunity for the market to stay positive as it opens Monday.

The Nasdaq Composite closed off with a gain of 1.14%, led by MMTec Inc.’s increase of 96%. S&P 500 closed up by 0.8%, with the major gainer being NetApp with an 18% increase. Rounding off the top three is the Dow Jones Industrial, with a gain of 0.23% and Salesforce Inc making a gain of 2.61%.

The US markets set new records last week, and with those kinds of headlines, the market could continue to do well for the coming weeks. The past few weeks have seen the stock markets trend higher, mainly on the gains of artificial intelligence and biotechnology companies. These two niches have outperformed a lot of the others on the market, with incredible gains that have been retained for the most part.

Stock Market Movement Indicators

The earnings for the stock markets are better than expected, and traders are looking ahead to the Fed’s policy updates on Wednesday. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell will be speaking to the Senate on Thursday as well, which will provide further context to the report to be released on Wednesday. Expect the market to shift in response to these events.

Inflation has decreased since the beginning of the year, but not by much. The incremental decrease may not be enough to warrant cutting interest rates.

There is still a lot of expected movement from artificial intelligence stocks as that market explodes. Traders should also watch for medical stocks and the increasing opportunity for major gains there, especially as new testing results come in on developing drugs.

Over the last eight weeks, the Nasdaq and S&P 500 gains for seven of those, which could indicate a continued bullish trend.