Amazon's $2T market cap, jobless claims: Market trends

Yahoo Finance's Josh Schafer joins Asking for a Trend to break down his biggest takeaways from the trading day.

Amazon has reached a $2 trillion market capitalization for the first time, making it the fifth tech company in the US to do so.

Schafer is also focused on weekly jobless claims. The data is set to be released Thursday at 8:30 a.m. ET, and he notes that the last month of data has been higher. He explains that another hotter-than-expected print could be cause for concern: "As people get laid off, they're going to go and file for unemployment benefits at some point, most likely. So you start to get a little bit more sense of what's actually happening. This is one of the key indicators when people talk about recession risk, if jobless claims tick up. That's where the big concern hits."

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Asking for a Trend.

This post was written by Melanie Riehl

Video transcript

Us.

Stocks Closing Higher The NASDAQ leading gains as Amazon hits a market cap milestone.

We have Yahoo Finance is very own.

Josh Schafer Joining us now with more on the trading day takeaways.

Joshua Amazon, Star of the day.

Enjoy Number one.

There we go.

$2 trillion market cap for the first time ever.

And let's take a look at our board here of the NASDAQ 100 the other mega caps.

I'll pull up the actual cap weight that we see, So here we go.

Market cap.

There you can see Amazon closing above two trillion for the first time ever.

Let me exit on out of that right there and then So it's below still these other four.

But it's the fifth tech company in the US to rise over two trillion.

And what really stands out to me about this Josh, is when we just take a look at the market action both today and over the last week.

So Amazon, up 4% today, really kind of carried the market is what Rove, the NASDAQ higher.

And then we talked a lot about NVIDIA over, I guess, really the last year, right?

But specifically over the last month, right?

So if we look over the last month, NVIDIA has had a nice run.

Even with that pullback, it's the best performer of the mega caps.

But you look here.

It's been interesting.

The other mag seven Stocks that we talk about a lot.

Microsoft up over 5% apple up over 12, Amazon itself up over seven.

And then you look over a seven day period when NVIDIA started to fall off a little bit.

You see in video in the red There what's been helping us because the S and P 500 hasn't fallen that much.

Well, NVIDIA is lagged.

Well, it's the other big stocks, like Amazon, so it's just sort of a reminder We talk about NVIDIA all day long, But there are other big stocks that also have big ratings in the S and P that can help the index close higher.

If NVIDIA isn't just going up every day, it also speaks Josh.

That's also you know, this and you've about this.

This this theme that investors are so focused on, which is this rally is, you know, narrow, right?

You hear that?

It's being led.

It's kind of big tech outperforming everybody else.

And it's It's interesting how Strats kind of think about that because some have come on the show and so that is, you know, a giant yellow flag.

But there's other.

And I know you've talked about this.

You've written about this in columns saying Others say, You know what?

Relax, Enjoy the ride.

Yeah, I mean, if you I'll, I'll put this on a year to date so you can see how some of the mega caps have been doing pretty decent gains.

I would argue for all of these stocks, right?

And the take is from those strategists is, well, this is being driven by earnings.

When you take a look at some of these stocks, the earnings estimates just keep moving higher.

If earnings are going up, then that's considered sort of a good, fundamental trend for the stock right and a reason for it to go higher.

So if that's what drives the rally higher, then people think that can be OK at some point.

Do you need everyone else to participate?

Yes, but for now, maybe you can survive with big tech continuing to outperform.

But we got more.

Take.

Get me Schafer.

Take number two.

Take away number two.

This is more something to watch going into tomorrow, But I'm particularly interested in weekly jobless claims.

And here's why.

So they come out at 8.

30 every Thursday.

They're not always a notable relief.

This is how many people are filing for unemployment.

But if you take a look at the trend we've been seeing here, really, for the last month, it's been higher.

This number here was above 240,000.

Filing about two weeks ago, that was the highest we had seen in 10 months.

And so a lot of folks right now talking about some softening we're seeing in the labour market, we know the unemployment rate has been ticking up.

It will be interesting to see when we get this release tomorrow morning.

If this sort of trend higher starts to continue because if it continues for several weeks, economists will start to get a little bit worried about what you and that's the question for just remind viewers.

If you're a viewer right now, you're an investor.

Why do you pay attention to this?

Why should that economic data point just kind of be on your radar.

So initial jobless claims, as I said, comes out every week.

Right?

So it's considered one of the better real time indicators because we get the jobs report that comes out every month.

But that's looking back.

So next week we'll get the June jobs report.

Looking back, maybe at a trend that we saw the first week of June, the second week of June.

This is last week, right?

And so it's a little bit more real time of what's happening.

And as people get laid off, they're gonna go and file for unemployment benefits at some point, most likely.

So you start to get a little bit more sense of what's actually happening.

This is one of the key indicators when people talk about recession risk.

If jobless claims tick up, that's where the big concern tomorrow we'll be watching.

Thank you, Josh