As the Wall Street Journal noted today, the market has, in recent weeks, seemed to pay less attention to macro events which has allowed investors to focus more on company specific news:
"The focus on individual companies marked a
turnaround from earlier this month, when all eyes were on developments in
Greece’s bailout talks and China’s tumbling stock
On Friday, dour economic news from China
helped accelerate a gathering commodities-market rout, but investors said the
big factors driving stocks were earnings-related, perhaps to a fault.
“The market has taken a
break from the macro[economic] and is focusing more on the company level,” said Tom
Digenan, head of U.S. equities at UBS Global Asset Management. “If you
have a bad quarter, that doesn’t necessarily project that things will be all
bad going forward, but the market seems to be playing that.”"
--
This week's stumble for the stock markets knocked off some of the shine on what was shaping up to be a really strong month. The S&P is now up just 0.8% for July after being up 3% as of last Friday. Thanks to some very positive earnings reports by tech giants like Netflix, Google and Amazon, the Nasdaq is still higher by 2% for the month.
Sector-wise it was another tough week for Energy as the space was down another 2%. Cyclicals, Consumer Staples and Financials held up rather well in the face of the selling in the broad indexes.
