Week In Review (7/13-7/17)

Markets kicked off the week's upward momentum with a powerful rush higher on Monday on the back of a Greek debt resolution.  As we commented on Tuesday, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras caved to the pressures of his European counterparts and agreed to a resolution that most saw as incredibly punitive on the Greek people.  In any event, stock markets worldwide celebrated the news and brought another V-bottom situation into play.  Further, the S&P 500, after piercing through its 200-day moving average for a short time last week, was able to correct that damage and then some.  It quickly bounced up from the 200-day to move back to the top-end of its months long range and worked off oversold conditions.  As the S&P has made its move, the VIX has once again collapsed after getting up near 20 last week.  We covered some interesting stats on the VIX in our Thursday post.

Every major US average was up handsomely for the week with the Nasdaq (+4.25%) being the clear leader and the S&P 500 coming in 2nd (+2.41%).

The Nasdaq's outperformance on the week continues its year-to-date leadership trend as it has now, by an ever so slight margin, cracked into the double digit gains category for 2015.

On a sector basis, technology led the way while energy and utilities continued to exhibit the weakness they've shown for many months now.

Technology's surge higher was led, in part, by a 3-headed monster of Google, Amazon and Netflix.  Each was up massively on the week and helped to pull its sector-mates higher.

Next week is another huge week for earnings announcements and will be sure to help shape the direction of the market's next move.