What’s to lead after NFPs?

S&P 500 rose following NFPs beat, but alongside Nasdaq sold off into the close – unlike Russell 2000. Markets chose to ignore weakening macro elements from prior months‘ downside revisions (95K for two months is a lot), decreasing participation rate or wobbly used car prices. The consumer is simply more pinched (economy bifurcated), and part-time jobs gained confirm that assessment too.

As I talk in Sunday‘s extensive weekend video, this gives the Fed no reason to cut, and yields reversed their retreat after poor ADP employment change Wednesday. Where does that leave the dollar? Not appreciating nearly enough. Review the video, macro data explanations are included.

How to explain gold declining then? Well, I told Trading Signals clients that the yellow metal would have a hard time keeping up on a daily basis, but silver was poised to outperform/ These dollar moves and real economy performance (forget not that this is a time of both decent GDP growth and very high debt issuance with rollovers, still before the big beautiful bill ) – and certain differentiations in real asset prospects can be made, and I‘ve been making them clear to Trading Signals clients throughout the week.

Way more details and actionable thoughts follow in the client section, where I start by looking at breadth and sectoral performance takeaways (the XLY:XLP ratio is a bit skewed through TSLA performance, understandably).