New S&P 500, Nasdaq records as volatility remains low: Asking for a Trend

Both the S&P 500 (^GSPC) and NASDAQ (^IXIC) closed at record highs after comments from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell kept hopes that the Fed will cut interest rates soon high.

The CBOE Volatility Index (^VIX), often referred to as "the fear index," is currently trading at unusually low levels for this time of year, especially for an election year.

Tesla (TSLA) continued its hot streak and closed higher for its 10th trading day in a row. Meanwhile, bitcoin (BTC-USD) continues to trade below $60,000, taking a little longer to recover than previous down periods. Should investors hold stocks overnight and trade in the morning? Data surrounding the S&P 500 (^GSPC) reveals it can cause a greater return than some trading in the day.

Athletic Brewing Co-Founder & CEO Bill Shufelt stopped by to discuss the company's new $50 million investment from General Atlantic, bringing the company's valuation to $800 million, and why non-alcoholic beer is gaining so much market share.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here.

Video transcript

Hello and welcome to ask you for a trend.

I'm Josh Lipton for the next half hour.

We're gonna be breaking down the trends of today, that'll move stocks tomorrow.

There's a lot to keep track of.

So we're focusing on what you need to know to get ahead of the curve.

Here are some of the trends we're gonna be diving into.

It's all about timing, testifying in front of the Senate committee fed chair Jerome Powell saying the FO MC is not ready cut rates yet and decline to give any signal on when those cuts could be coming.

But investors of course, will be watching for favorable CP I data Thursday that could bolster the odds of a September cut and the chip race intensifies.

Amazon launching its fourth generation Graviton processor chip.

The tech giant is looking overtaking videos market dominance, but there's plenty of semiconductor wealth to go around.

We'll discuss that next plus big business for booze free beer, athletic brewing, announcing a major investment in its latest financing round that aims to help America's largest non alcoholic beer get even bigger.

We're joined by the CEO.

It's come up later to discuss a new book is offering predictions about A I's impact over the next decade.

And while big tech is driving the market this year, our next guest is arguing that A I could deepen many already existing inequalities.

Joining us now is the author of Mastering A I A survival guide to our super powered Future and A I editor at Fortune.

By the way, Jeremy Khan, Jeremy.

Good to have you here.

Oh, thanks for having me.

So we, we're just talking Jeremy about how uh how Aws um making some news is gonna launch his fourth uh Graviton processors processor their in house um uh chip.

What do you make of that Jeremy?

Any, any fast thoughts reactions?

Yeah, I mean, I think Amazon's been trying to, to make sure it has a chip that's competitive in the marketplace for a while.

It was caught a bit off guard by the boom in large language model based A I and did not really have a set of chips that was really well designed for that kind of uh that kind of A I.

So they've been kind of trying to play catch up and this will help them to some extent to show that they have a chip that's power for in the market that can meet the demand of, of customers.

All right, maybe helping them in that big cloud computing fight with, with Microsoft and Google.

Let's get to your book uh Jeremy.

It's interesting big picture um You'll hear a lot of folks say that we are in this sort of historic moment.

I think, you know, even in videos Jensen Wong talks about, right?

They'll say ne next industrial revolution has begun.

Um That's kind of this pivotable paradigm shift, you know, internet mobile now.

A I you seem to be in that camp.

Yeah, I mean, I think this is a, a very transformative technology, this is a big deal.

Um I think we're at the beginning of this, this real sort of, yeah, fourth industrial revolution, if you wanna call it that um you know, there's, this is uh gonna transform a lot of aspects of our lives and our, and the way we work and how companies are organized.

Uh I think it's, it has huge effects.

What about those skeptics though?

Jeremy?

They'll say, you know, when you play around with these A I chat bots, it still seems like there needs, needs to be some more work to be done, some more fine tuning with, you know, the, the so called hallucinations, meaning, you know, they just make up stuff.

Um So there's skeptics here.

They say, you know, we got a ways to go.

What, what do you say to that?

I think there's some things that need improving for sure.

Um You know, we do not have systems right now.

They're as capable as we'd like them to be.

But I do think within the next, you know, 2 to 5 years, it's gonna, you know, reshape, how, why are you so confident Jeremy?

I think, I think if you look at the trajectory of what's happened with this technology and how much is getting invested in it now and how big a commitment you have from some of the biggest tech companies in the world, this is going to get sorted out to the extent that we can use this technology in a way that's going to make us productive.

If you look at what they're already doing for coders, for instance, um you know, that's one of the the early use cases of a kind of A I co pilot that has really taken off and now you will not find a a developed software developer out there who does not use one of these systems as a kind of uh co programmer.

And I think it's gonna be very much the same for, for other knowledge workers too.

Sorry about coding is one as you look across, you know, when you're trying to game this out, what other sectors, what other industries do you think are gonna really be kind of, you know, upended, redefined?

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think coding is obviously one of the first ones.

I think we're gonna see law accounting um impacted in a big way by some of these kind of copilot technologies, marketing uh functions already are using a lot of A I to do first drafts.

Um, and to even design whole campaigns, I think we're gonna see the creative industries impacted, whether that's music or, uh, Hollywood.

Um, and, uh, potentially the publishing industry impact in a big way as well.

That's a lot of vertical sectors in what does that mean for the labor market?

Yeah.

Well, I think it's, there's a lot of fear about mass unemployment and I do not think that's a, that's a real risk because I don't think this will replace, replace all workers at the same time, essentially.

Yes, a lot of jobs will change.

But I don't think everyone's gonna lose their job at once.

And then part is what you said before.

I don't think the technology is yet.

And even in the 2 to 5 year time frame I talked about where I think it's gonna get a lot better.

It's still not gonna be good enough to do your entire job.

And so I think if you have a job right now, what you do is gonna change but, you know, it's not gonna put you to work entirely.

Um, it may though mean that we need a lot fewer young people coming into certain professions because it may be that, you know, pretty law or banking, for instance, that hired, you know, hundreds of young people and kind of use them as, as a sort of canon fodder out there to, to do basic research task, due due diligence.

You're just not gonna need as many people.

How do we, how do we sort of general, you know, how do you create the conditions where the most people possible benefit from the kind of seismic shift you see possibly here.

Yeah, I think a lot of it has to do how you frame the technology.

And if, if you start looking at it as an enhancer of productivity, an enhancer of human intelligence instead of looking at it as a replacement for human labor and saying, oh, how can we take people out of the equation?

I think that will go a long way towards, you know, making sure that we the benefits of this because actually what people can do with the technology is really powerful and it's a lot more than you can, you can actually gain by just taking people out.

Again, the technology is not yet good enough to, to actually substitute for people, but it is good enough to help people become much more productive in your, in your opinion.

What's the role of regulators here?

Yeah, I think we need regulation.

I think we needed, you know, yesterday essentially.

Um I don't think we should trust the tech companies to kind of get the business model that's gonna align our interest with their interest.

You trust the regulators though, you think, I mean, because that's the question I have the experience, the tech shops to get it right.

Um I think we need to make sure we have regulators that have that experience and we're gonna have to train up and they may have to hire, you know, I know people worry about regulatory capture, but I do think we're gonna have to hire people probably out of the tech sector.

Um, you know, and they'll have to go work for the regulator for a while.

We do that in other areas though too.

Um And I think, you know, it's true right now in government, there's not that much expertise in this area, but I think we're gonna have to build that capacity very quickly.

Do you think A I is coming from uh for on air business anchors possible?

It could be, I don't know if there's some, there's some digital avatars out there.

They're pretty good.

Nobody's here, Jeremy.

Thank you.

Congrats so much.

Thank you S and P 500 NASDAQ uh building on record highs today.

Rate cut hopes remaining intact after Fed chair Pow, kicked off his semi annual update to Congress and Yahoo Finance says Jared Brookie joins us now with more on the trading day takeaways.

Jared.

That's right.

Powell might be on the hill, but I wanna talk Tesla and that is as Tesla is now notching this 10 day winning streak and let me just pull up our mega cap heat map and I'll do a little charting action.

Uh That is not it, but here is Tesla along with some of the other mega caps in down here at the bottom 3.71% is what it returned today.

And here is the year to date chart.

This is something and let me just put some candlesticks on her.

First of all, you can see just barely climbing into the green for the year.

Uh And this only happened a few days ago, but here is that 10 day streak and this comes off the bottom of that head and should actually top of that head and shoulders, uh bottom that we were seeing there.

And you look at the longer term chart, it's finally broken out of this negative trend line and, and so very encouraging from a number of short term perspectives.

So it's on a hot streak.

Where do we go from here, Jared?

Is it 300 beyond, you know, 300 is a big level.

Let me just erase that line there and you can see 300 was a resistance line in the past kind of right there also right there.

So I think it would be a little bit of a stretch for a Tesla to get up to 300 but it could squeeze there.

We've seen it defy odds before.

Interestingly, it is now in the midst of a 53 day uh 53 day rally.

That's this point to this point right there.

Remember this is only five, this is five years, but that is equal to 85% here.

85% here, 85% here just seems like Tesla has kind of gone that distance.

So if that's the case, it might just end up pausing right there before it regains uh or recharges for the next move where that is we'll be watching.

All right.

Now, guess what we're gonna talk about?

We're gonna talk about day traders versus night traders and let me explain what that is holding overnight is greater than holding during the day.

Uh This is a chart I like to update from time to time and basically it takes the market.

It's blitzed in a two.

Is it 930 to 4 p.m. that's in the purple here or is it 4 p.m. to 930 ami imagine every day at the bell at the closing bell you buy and then you sell in the morning that would net you more money.

This would have netted you more money since the October lows last year.

Why Jared reasons for this?

I'll tell you what if you think about it.

The market is only open 6.5 per uh 6.5 hours per day.

It is closed the rest of the time, 17.5 hours.

So that means it's closed about 72% of the time.

There's all kinds of stuff that's happening all around the world.

What I found over time, this goes back to over 30 years is that you want to be in the direction of the overnight market.

I've never seen a bull market where you don't have the overnight market actually gaining more than the day market.

It's just because of the time difference.

Let's say you're an investor, you're watching this, Jared.

Is this in any way?

I mean, is it a source of worry for you concern?

You know, it's not a sell, it's never been a source.

It would be a source of concern for me if I didn't see this.

Let me put it that way because when we were in the 2022 bear market, this picture looked vastly different.

Uh The overnight market was selling off a lot more than the uh day.

And that's kind of, uh that's kind of the balance that we see.

It's a simple uh amount of percentage time, the market overnight.

You got more time.

All right.

Third Jared B point.

All right.

We got to talk crypto here on Bitcoin.

Bitcoin heading towards up to uh finally up to 60,000.

Let me just chart what's going on with Bitcoin right now.

Um I'm fond of saying that Bitcoin loves to fake out traders and we've seen this time and time again.

Uh give me two secondss.

Here's our crypto heat map and uh that's crypto stocks.

We want to get the actual token, here's Bitcoin um on a year to date chart and let me put the candlesticks here we are seeing that has just been in this consolidation range.

Now, it already broke a few months ago at the very end of April, beginning of May, it broke down, then it quickly recovered.

It's kind of doing that right now.

But you're noticing it's taking a little bit more time.

The amount of time that it's taking is concerning.

So that's why I say it needs to be it up above 60,000, otherwise probably gonna use that as a resistance level.

And then it's, and then it goes down from there.

So it looks like that where it breaks above and looks like that and goes up to test this 75,000.

So that's Bitcoin it.

What about the other big tokens?

What are they potentially telling me?

Sure.

So we just saw Bitcoin kind of breaking uh its multi month range, Ethereum doing something some similar.

If we take this line here just below 3000, we can see we haven't gone as low as a Bitcoin by taking out these prior levels here, but we are testing them.

So I think this is actually a more constructive chart that we're looking at here is Ethereum and we can also check out SOLANA, I do like the SOLANA chart as well.

You can see this is actually the lower bound here is actually the break even Mar Mark.

Uh This is also respecting its lower boundary.

So all in all I give crypto a fair amount of chance to say the bull market is still here, but kind of holding on.

Bitcoin 60,000 is make or break for me.

All right, Jared.

Thank you, buddy.

But coming up, we're talking with the CEO of non alcoholic beer bread, athletic brewing about the company's latest financing round more.

Asking for a trend on the other side, America's largest non alcoholic brewery is about to get a whole lot bigger athletic brewing today announcing it secured $50 million in an equity financing round led by General Atlantic.

This latest round brings the company's valuation to a reported $800 million roughly double from just two years ago with more on what this investment means for the future of the brand.

I'm joined now by Bill Shufelt, co founder and CEO of Athletic uh Bill.

Great to see you.

Thank you so much for having me back on.

So let's start with that news, $50 million.

Big number Bill.

How are you gonna put it to work?

Yeah, we're, we're not just lobbied in the digital marketing or anything.

We are investing in real assets.

Um as athletic has invested well over 100 million to date in hard assets.

Um So we actually own and operate the biggest non alcoholic beer breweries in the world and make all our products in house.

So, um yes, since I was here last and I think last time I was here, I said we think non alcoholic beer is going to 20% of the overall beer market.

And this is us putting our money where our mouth is and really investing out ahead of that trend.

Um We, a couple of weeks ago, we announced the purchase of um one of the largest craft manufacturing facilities out there in San Diego.

And so we're gonna be investing in that and double what we invest in the building we're gonna do in improvements and uh overall things for non alcoholic beer production.

And so, yeah, we're really excited to put that money to work investing in the future.

And when your investors asked you bill, they, they look at your total addressable market, your t how, how big is it?

How fast is that market growing?

Well, it does take very long term investors and we're really fortunate to have those uh not only General Atlantic who's joining us in this round, but our other existing large investors, uh TRB advisor KDP Alliance Consumer Growth, State of Connecticut taste maker and a number of others.

Um But in that, like non alcoholic beer right now is about 1.5% of all beer and that group is on the ride with us thinking beer, non alcoholic beer is going well into the double digits at grocery.

It's already 3% at a lot of key large national retailers that we all know by name.

It's over 5% already some natural channel stores that's over 15% year to date.

To the beer market.

So that point to a very big market in the future is that and is that because Bill, there is just some type of broader cultural shift going on where people are they thinking about alcohol differently, how much to consume, whether they want to consume it all?

So I think a little bit of it is like people thinking about moderation and health potentially, but we don't really have a strong view on health.

We have a view on options and we're thinking about this very positive sum.

Like there were a lot of people 10 years ago, like myself who just had no options.

If you were not drinking, you were not a part of anything social or fun.

Um I think it was so much changing.

Yeah.

And like, I think a perfect example is this past weekend, July 4th holiday, walking around and looking at coolers like, and people I'm not affiliated with just like at the beach, at barbecues, different stuff.

Saw a lot of athletic brewing and hands and you know, I, I think if people put a substantial amount of non alcoholic beer in a cooler during the day or something like that, it's gonna go.

And the nice thing is that with like the variety of adult beverages out there, both alcoholic and non alcoholic, we're kind of moving into an era where there's a bit of more of a judgment free zone and people aren't like questioning your drink for kind of those reasons.

You were talking about some of the, you know, there is competition though, I mean, big Brewers, they would also like to move into that judgment free zone.

I mean, how do you think about the competition?

What's your advantage there?

I, I think we're dedicated as specialists.

Um You know, it's a lot different when it's, I'm popping up an IP A by the way, everybody knows.

this is, this is the uh run wild.

Yeah.

So that's our flagship West Coast IP A um we also have our Golden nail and then a hazy IP a, a light lager.

So a whole line up of variety out there on shelves across the country.

Um But that is available because we are specialists in the category and it's not only like, so a lot of big companies have a whole range of 50 plus skews and one of them is non alcoholic.

Athletic is 100% focused on this and super excited.

So, you ever feel that even, even though it's non alcoholic is, you're drinking it, you kind of relax.

Well, I think that's what it is.

It's humans have been drinking beer for 5000 years.

It's tapping into like some reptilian part of my brain.

Is that what's going on?

I think it is.

I think it seeps into the senses and, you know, it, it's so ingrained in us that like beer is that much a part of us.

That's what you're saying, Bill.

When I think when you hold the beer, it signals I'm relaxing.

I'm with family and friends.

Um, so there's a real placebo effect there.

I think last question, who's, who's your demo bill?

Who's the average customer?

I mean, just, is it men, is it women, young, old?

Who is it?

Well, so, uh, the previous thought, like, call it 1015 years ago, was that non alcoholic beer was for very specific cohorts, like 1% of the population, 1% of the time and was very stigmatized in penalty box.

It turns out non alcoholic beer is for everyone any time.

And if you put a six pack of alcoholic beer and athletic beers in your fridge, you'll find all sorts of exciting delicious occasions that those fit well and it, it, it fits into a whole huge new range of occasions that beer was never consumed in before.

Bill.

Great congrats on the news.

Thanks for coming on.

We always love having you.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate being back for more than six decades.

Walmart has redefined retail in 2023 alone.

The company brought in more than $648 billion in revenue.

Yahoo finances beyond the ticker takes a deep dive in the company's biggest moments.

Take a listen for more than six decades.

The discount mega store Walmart has redefined retail in 2023 alone.

The company brought in more than $648 billion in revenue.

Fiona ticker takes a deep dive into the company's biggest moments.

Walmart was founded in 1962 by Sam Walton.

Its first location was in Rogers, Arkansas.

Five years later, the Walton family owned 24 stores and rocked up $12.7 million in sales.

On October 1st, 1970 Walmart went public via an IP O on the New York Stock Exchange shares opened at 1650 per share.

The company opened its first Sam's Club in 1983 in Oklahoma in a bid to compete with Costco's wholesale member only model.

In early 1988 founder Sam Walton stepped down as CEO and David Glass was named his successor.

That same year, the first Walmart Super Center opened in Washington, Missouri creating what it's currently known for that mix of general merchandise and grocery.

In 1996 Wal Mart opened its first location in China and surpassed $1 billion in sales for the year.

Walmart.com launched in 2000, allowing us customers to shop online as amazon.com began to take off to compete with Amazon among other online retailers.

Walmart introduced free two day shipping in 2017.

During the pandemic, the retailer boomed as consumers sought out the COVID-19 vaccine and then cheaper groceries as inflation picked up.

In late March.

Walmart stock reached a record closing high of $61.45 per share and it only keeps growing from here with more than 10,500 stores in 19 different countries.

The Vics volatility index is not only low for this time of year but it's low for this time of year in an election year.

The finances Julie Hyman joins me now with a closer look.

Yeah, talking about volatility, you know, even as the political class is volatile right now or the discourse around it is volatile as some prominent Democrats have called for President Biden to step aside and not continue his campaign to be re elected markets.

Well, they don't seem to paying a heck of a lot of attention.

At least if you're looking at certain measures like the VIC, the VICS allity index tends to spike or go up when you see concern entering the market.

That's why it's colloquially called the Fear Index.

We did see it rise a little bit earlier in the year, but mostly it's risen around discussions around what the fed is gonna do.

It's remained pretty low here.

If you look at the five year, you can see it's been trending pretty low post pandemic.

So the folks over at Bespoke Investment Group, they looked at July 9th specifically in election years to say, well, what, what are we typically at, at this time of year in a presidential election year?

And the answer is we're very low this time around we're only around 12.5.

The next closest was in 2016 when we were at 13.2.

But in election years, you do sometimes see these spikes in A V around 20.

That's where you kind of have to get 1920 to see a more elevated volatility that it indicates that there is some concern here.

What they also point out is not only is the VICS low for an election year, it's just low in general, it has been trending lower here as we have seen this melt up happen in the stock market that you and I have talked a lot about.

You have seen this kind of drop in volatility, Josh.

All right, Julie Hyman.

Thank you time now for to watch Wednesday, July 10th.

Starting off on the fed chair, Jerome Powell, he's back continuing his congressional testimony in the morning.

This time in front of the House Committee on Financial Services is coming after Powell faced questions today from the Senate banking Committee fed chair indicating that the central bank is getting closer to feeling comfortable about interest rate cuts and sticking with the fed and round of fed commentary is coming throughout the day tomorrow including Chicago fed President Austin rules and fed governors Michelle Bowman and Lisa Cook Bowman speaking earlier today at a conference in DC about small business businesses after the small business optimism index came in better than expected.

Wall Street will listen for any clues from fed officials tomorrow about inflation.

As we do approach two key of economic data this week with the consumer and producer price index readings.

And finally, we're going to be getting a bit of housing data in the form of mortgage applications.

Last week, applications fell 2.6% from the week prior.

That is a wrap on today's asking for a trend and be sure to come back tomorrow at 4:30 p.m. Eastern for all of the latest market moving stories affecting your wallet.

Have a great night.