Stock Market Today: March 17th - 21st, 2025

Here are this morning's pre-market earnings results:

 

Morning Lineup - 3/18/25 - Three-peat?
Tue, Mar 18, 2025

Futures are modestly lower this morning, but since the S&P 500 is coming off its first back-to-back positive days since the February peak, bulls can’t get greedy - although a three-peat would be nice! In that two-day rally, the S&P 500 gained 2.8% for its best two-day gain since the days after the election. That was when the markets had a much more optimistic view of what Trump 2.0 would mean for stock prices. Ironically, the S&P 500 closed the day before Election Day 2024 at 5,712, and yesterday it closed at 5,675, so the market has essentially gone nowhere despite all the highs and lows during the last 4.5 months.

The chart below shows the S&P 500’s performance during the current bull market that began in October 2022 with red dots showing each two-day gain of over 2.5%. Early in the bull market, these types of moves were common, but their frequency over the last 18 months has been much less common.

 

Here is a final look at today's market and futures maps, as well as how each sector performed individually at the close on Tuesday, March 18th, 2025.

 

Top of the morning StocksForumers! Happy Hump Day to all of you and welcome to the new trading day and a frrrrrrrrrrrresh start. Here is a quick check on those futures as we are over an hour into the US cash market open.

GLTA on this Wednesday, March the 19th, 2025!

 

Here are today's economic calendar events:

 

Here are today's analyst stock upgrades & downgrades:

 

Here are this morning's pre-market earnings results:

 

Morning Lineup - 3/19/25 - More Uncertainty
Wed, Mar 19, 2025

As investors wait on the FOMC’s interest rate decision (or lack thereof), the Summary of Economic Projections (SEP), and the press conference from Chair Powell, US equity futures have a modestly positive bias heading into the opening bell.

Besides the FOMC, there are no major economic or earnings-related reports on the calendar, but one newsworthy item just coming across the tape is comments from Bank of America (BAC) CEO Brian Moynihan saying that as of Monday, consumers have put 6% more dollars into the economy this year than they did over the same period last year. Wait. What? Haven't these recent consumer sentiment surveys been suggestive of the consumer falling off a cliff? As Moynihan commented, "the economy is holding up better than people think".

Uncertainty is everywhere you look as any index that attempts to measure it has surged in the last couple of months. Within today’s FOMC statement and SEP, we’re likely to see more of that. The Fed releases its SEP four times a year, and in the last release back in December we started to see some of that.

In addition to updating their forecasts for GDP Growth, the Unemployment Rate, Inflation, and the expected level of the Fed Funds rate in the coming years, in each SEP, members of the FOMC also note their level of uncertainty about each of their forecasts along with whether the risks to their projections are weighted to the upside, downside, or not at all.

Back in December, FOMC members noted big increases in the level of uncertainty about PCE inflation on both a headline and core basis and almost unanimously agreed that the risks to inflation were to the upside. That was a big shift to September when most participants thought inflation risks were ‘broadly balanced’. Since those projections back in December, the country’s tariff policy has only grown murkier, so don’t expect any improvement in these readings today.



Back in December, levels of uncertainty regarding GDP Growth and the Unemployment Rate weren’t nearly as high. For most members of the FOMC, risks to GDP growth and the Unemployment Rate were ‘broadly balanced’. However, given the plunging levels of sentiment in various measures of consumer and business confidence plus the rapidly declining levels of forecasted growth in models like the Atlanta Fed GDP Now, it’s hard to imagine that FOMC members are any more confident about expected economic growth and the state of the jobs market going forward.

 

Here is a final look at today's market and futures maps, as well as how each sector performed individually at the close on Wednesday, March 19th, 2025.

 

Top of the morning StocksForumers! Happy Thursday to all of you and welcome to the new trading day and a frrrrrrrrrrrresh start. Here is a quick check on those futures as we are over an hour into the US cash market open.

GLTA on this Thursday, March the 20th, 2025!

 

Here are today's economic calendar events:

 

Here are today's analyst stock upgrades & downgrades:

 

Here are this morning's pre-market earnings results:

 

Morning Lineup - 3/20/25 - Higher Lows
Thu, Mar 20, 2025

From the FOMC’s interest rate announcement through the end of Chair Powell's press conference, the S&P 500 steadily rallied higher. Almost exactly when Powell stopped speaking, though, stocks started to weaken, and they closed well off the intraday highs. The post-presser weakness has continued this morning as S&P 500 futures are down about 35 bps while the Nasdaq is down half a percent. There’s not much in the way of a catalyst to point to for this morning’s weakness, but overnight Asia was lower, and European stocks are also in the red. ECB President Lagarde commented that 25% tariffs on US imports of European goods would knock 0.3 percentage points from Eurozone economic growth in the first year of their implementation while an escalation would only exacerbate those impacts.

There are several economic reports on the calendar this morning, including jobless claims and the Philly Fed report at 8:30 followed by Leading Indicators and Existing Home Sales at 10 AM. On the sentiment front, the weekly survey from AAII showed that bearish sentiment came in at 58.1%. That marks the fourth straight week of readings above 55% which has never happened in the survey's history (since 1987), and it’s only the seventh time that bearish sentiment has been above 50% for four or more straight weeks.

It’s not often that you get a setup where just about all of the major US indices rally more than 1% over the last week and yet every single one remains in oversold territory. After the plunge in stocks during the first two weeks of March took all the major index ETFs into ‘extreme’ oversold territory as of last week, the rally we have seen since last Thursday’s close has only been enough to move them merely into oversold territory, and based on where futures are trading now, they’re on pace to remain oversold today.



The last four trading days were a welcome respite from the barrage of selling, and it was the first time since the February peak that the S&P 500 traded higher three times in a four-trading day span. With that pause in the selling, the S&P 500 is looking to find some semblance of stabilization from what has practically been a straight down leg lower. Stabilization doesn’t mean immediately reversing and trading in a straight line higher. Usually, it takes a period of back-and-forth churning before the market can gain enough energy to stage a rally. Looking at the chart, bulls hope that is exactly what the S&P 500 is doing now, but only time will tell.

With such a steep drop lower in the last month, it’s hard to remember that the S&P 500 had another leg lower from late 2024 and into early 2025 when the S&P 500 pulled back just over 4%. Back then, it seemed like a meaningful pullback, but not so much now.

 

Here is a final look at today's market and futures maps, as well as how each sector performed individually at the close on Thursday, March 20th, 2025.

 

Top of the morning StocksForumers! Happy Thursday to all of you and welcome to the final trading day of the week and a frrrrrrrrrrrresh start. Here is a quick check on those futures as we are over an hour into the US cash market open.

GLTA on this Friday, March the 21st, 2025!

 

Here are today's economic calendar events: