Trends of the month just past – February 2025

Baruch's Tool Box

In February, consumer sentiment seemed to weaken. Consumers are the real driver of this country’s economy, so this seeming disillusion caused investor unease. Maybe even pulled some money off the stock market table.

Nvidia’s long awaited quarterly report was good, decent, but not, as accustomed, amazing. And it puts drag on indexes. Margins did not grow - it's costing a bit more to make the magic. 

A thought has dawned on 'the market' too that the quick ascent of General AI innovation may have been overstated. *** 

Another Mag 7 stock, Tesla, lost 30% this month, also putting pressure on indexes. The S&P hit a record on Feb 19..but in the end lost 1.4% for the month. The tech heavy Nasdaq lost 2.8% for the month .. it’s biggest monthly drop since last April

Concern on the economy is coupled with lowered yields for 10-year Treasuries. Now at 4.24%. As reported by the NY Times, that is its lowest level since mid-December.

*** No less than S. Nadella of Microsoft in a podcast commented: If you're going to have this explosion, abundance, whatever, commodity of intelligence available, the first thing we have to observe is GDP growth …  This is where we get a little bit ahead of ourselves with all this [Artificial General Intelligence] hype.”