Market highs, American Giant CEO, smartphones: Market Domination Overtime

The Fourth of July holiday is nearly here as Seana Smith and Josh Lipton break down Wednesday’s market close (^DJI, ^IXIC, ^GSPC) in the shortened trading session. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite accelerate into new record highs, just after the S&P 500 broke through 5,500 in yesterday’s session.

American Giant founder and CEO Bayard Winthrop joins the program to talk about the apparel brand’s partnership with Walmart (WMT) as it seeks to cut clothing prices for consumers amid expensive fast fashion trends.

Market Domination Overtime is joined by Yahoo Finance tech editor Dan Howley to discuss the tightening AI smartphone race between tech companies Samsung (005930.KS), Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL), and Apple (AAPL). Yahoo Finance personal finance writer Rebecca Chen covers US mortgage rate’s slow ascent for the first week since May.

This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.

Video Transcript

That’s the closing bell on Wall Street on the short end, trading day and time.

Now for market domination over time.

Let’s see where the major averages ended up here for the day.

We’ve got Jared Bry also standing by with a closer look at some of the movement that we have been seeing.

But another record setting day here on the street, we’ve got the NASDAQ closing up just about 9/10 of a percent, taking a look at the S and P 500.

That’s also at another record here closing up about a half of a percent.

We also take a look at some strength even within the Russell 2000 closing up just about nearly 2/10 of a percent here to the upside.

Take a look at some of that sector action, why we’re seeing some gains at least here for the S and P and the NASDAQ and some of that having to do with NVIDIA.

When you think about the biggest contributor here, at least to the S and PS gains, you look at NVIDIA closing just around 4.5% when you take a look at that three day charts and that momentum that we have seen for NVIDIA.

And I, I guess too much of a different of a picture here as you take a look at what has certainly been a volatile couple of trading days here for NVIDIA over the last several days.

But again, closing up just above 100 and 28 bucks a share on a sector basis.

Still looking at a bit of a mixed picture, Jared over to you.

Yes.

And I’ll note that XL K was the only sector that’s tech sector that closed at a record high.

And also we’ve been seeing some strength here today in materials and also consumer discretionary.

And I would remind people that consumer discretionary just had a big breakout yesterday.

The two biggest components, Tesla and Amazon and Amazon closed down today down about 1.2%.

Story continues

But I want to take a look at Tesla up 6.5% over these last three days.

Up basically 25%.

That is a huge gain.

And when you take a look at the longer term picture, you can see, well, you know, it still hasn’t climbed all the way up to the mid point quite yet of this very extended trading range over the last five years.

But it’s quickly getting there.

I think some place around 260 or so, probably due for a pause if not a little bit before.

But let’s also take a look at some of the other leaders that we’ve seen emerge today.

It was a great day for chip stocks.

Also solar bouncing back cannabis stocks, Chinese stocks disruption.

So that would be unprofitable tech.

And let’s just dig into a couple of those.

Here are the art components boosted mainly by Tesla.

But we’re also seeing some green by beam therapeutics up 5% China I mentioned was also in the green today here we got T com.

That’s trip.com up 4% Alibaba up 2.5, Baidu up and a half percent.

So another area that’s been under pressure kind of bouncing back.

But all in all, I just bring it to the fact that July the 1st 10 trading days of July the most bullish of the year when you take into consideration the beginning of a month or an end of a month.

So especially going into this holiday shortened week.

Not a lot of surprise to see the bulls in charge here.

We’ll have to see what comes Friday, which is kind of an odd day for us with the employment situation report falling after this market holiday.

Thank you, Jared stocks close and mix on this holiday shortened trading day with the S and P hitting its 33rd record high of the year for more on what this means for investors entering the second half gonna bring in Tyler Ellard Portfolio Manager Gradient Investment.

So Tyler, it’s good to see you.

Um as my colleague Jared was just saying there bulls have been in charge S and P hitting its 33rd record high of the, of the year.

What do you make of that, Tyler, what do you tell your clients about it?

Do you think the good times continue?

Yeah, I mean, I think generally speaking, good times could continue, but the back half of this year certainly gonna be choppy.

Obviously, we, we, we’re getting a contentious election coming up, who knows who the the candidates are officially gonna be on the, on the Democratic side after the news today.

Um So it’s definitely gonna be a choppy second half.

But if you look historically, statistically speaking, second half on a, on a election year, presidential election year and on a year, that’s been this strong, you typically get decent performance in the back half.

But I think from a, from a broader perspective, certainly start taking some pro profits on these names that have done well and try and diversify the portfolio a little bit.

We don’t need to risk everything on betting, betting it all on NVIDIA right now.

Obviously, it’s, it’s done very well, but I think you get a, a happier client with a more diversified portfolio from the, the top six.

So what are you diversifying into there, Tyler?

Yeah.

You know, I think energy is a, is a good option right now.

Um We like Schlumberger or Slb as they kind of changed their name.

A little bit or Sun Core Energy uh Canadian name, those are a couple.

Uh you could look at some of the in industrial side.

So from the infrastructure Bill Crh, a cement company is, is certainly one that we like.

Um, but you know, that doesn’t say that we’re, we’re taking everything off the table from these mega caps, right?

We still like the Googles, we still like Meta and we still like Amazon.

We still think there’s room for to run, but we may just be a little bit underweight on the nvidia’s and Apples and Microsoft’s right now.

What about healthcare, Tyler?

I see that in my notes here.

That’s also a sector you’re bullish on.

We are, we are generally speaking, most of the health care play right now has been towards G LP ones, at least for the last call a year and a half.

I do think there’s some, some opportunity outside of those names in, in the more the diabetes space.

Dexcom being one of them is, is kind of my top pick right now.

Um Their ability to, to reach from, from just the US market into international markets and the new products that they’re bringing on.

You know, I think this company has a pretty strong growth trajectory in front of them.

Um, and, and plenty of tail winds behind them.

So I, I think from a uh health care side, that would be the name that I would go with Tyler when you take a look at how calm the market’s been, really, we’ve had this absence of volatility.

Now, for quite some time, is that going to change with earnings season?

Do you think that might, could potentially introduce maybe this next wave of volatility leading up to then?

Obviously, the election, I do.

Certainly, investors are going to be paying attention to Q two and, and how those earnings go Q four of last year, Q one of this year has been strong so far.

Um Earnings revisions have actually been positive, but I think more of the focus is gonna be on the election and, and what those policies are are going to tell us uh just like Monday, for example, interest rates spiked on, on potential policy actions of, of either party.

So I think yes, Q two is gonna be important but I think sentiment and, and focus is gonna be more towards the election and, and how, and, and diving deep into the policies of, of either candidate and how that’s really going to affect the market for the next six months to a year.

Tyler, we, we got through this almost entire interview.

We, we didn’t even mention the Fed.

Um which in itself is kind of interesting.

I mean, d does you as an investor or, or how, how close are you mining the fed?

Whether the FED cuts this year?

Do you think that’s, that’s critical to whether the market can keep moving higher.

Yeah.

Look, I think as we entered the year, the consensus was 6 to 7.

We initially thought based on, on our expectations was 1 to 2.

Um, data was strong, growth was strong, fed was holding tight.

Uh Their, their commentary didn’t suggest they were gonna cut.

Now, we’ve kind of pivot a little bit but we still think we might get one or not.

No cut at all.

Um I know the Fed likes to be apo but I would say that a cut in front of a contentious election that could be construed as, as a political action.

I don’t think the Fed wants to get involved in that.

So I think your best bet is probably around December.

And despite all that data has still remained strong on the economic front.

So there really isn’t any reason for them to, to make any cuts at this point unless if we do start to see, you know, more deterioration um through September and, and October Tyler.

When you take a look at some of the expectations here for inflation, we have seen a bit of this disinflationary trend or disinflation trend.

Powell was commenting on it uh earlier this week out of Portugal saying that he has been encouraged by that progress.

What do you think that last mile as the Fed works to get back to that 2% goal?

Is that something that’s going to be very tough?

Take a long time?

I guess, how are you evaluating that as you lay out some of those opportunities that you’re finding within the market.

It’s certainly gonna be tough for them to get to that 2% and, and certainly don’t expect it to be at 2% by the end of this year.

And, and Paul has even said that.

So for us, what’s important is looking at, obviously, housing data is, is one of the stickier components.

But then you also do get some headwinds from last year’s disinflation and from some of the the uh consumer durables, you know, some they had some negative prints last year.

And so I think there could be some headwinds that could pop up this year.

So I think generally speaking, you need housing to come down or slow.

I should say as well as some of the the energy prices and food prices.

I think that’s gonna be the the biggest headwind um and keeping inflation this sticky.

So it’s gonna be a challenge and I don’t expect them to get to that 2% target anytime uh this year.

All right, Tyler Eligard.

Great to have you.

Thanks so much for talking with us here.

All right, we got the latest reading on the housing market, mortgage rates higher for the first time in five weeks.

We wanna bring in Yahoo Finance’s Rebecca Chen joining us now with the details.

Hey, Rebecca, hey, Shana, we have seen mortgage rate, the fixed 30 year average rate increase about nine basis points this week according to Freddie Mac.

Now, this is the first time since May, that rate has increased.

And also the first time in over four weeks that it went up, uh, we’ve seen rates hover around the 7% mark for a while now.

And one housing actually said this has helped inventory to come back to the market.

And the reason is because with a more stabilized mortgage rate, more homeowners are willing to list their home by giving up their lower mortgage rate because and the reason is because they are getting a lot more used to the higher rate environment that we are seeing today.

Um What has been happening is as Americans you know, move on with their life.

Maybe they have a new baby, maybe they need a new school district.

It’s getting to a time where some people have to move and put that inventory on the market.

Now from the home buyer side, we have yet to see a return of demand at the activity on the mortgage activity.

Mortgage application is still very low according to the latest statistics.

But housing experts are saying that as we see mortgage rates stabilize or even decline, we will see more inventory on the market.

And in turn, that will help with the housing prices and bring buyers back, Rebecca.

Thank you, appreciate it.

Have a great fourth with a rich history dating back to the 19th century.

Eli Lilly has faced struggles and successes but a booming market cap has quickly turned it into the biggest pharmaceutical brand in the world.

Let’s dive into Lily’s biggest moments with beyond the ticker bidding.

Big A made in America Walmart launching a line of T shirts from direct to consumer brand American Giant just in time for the fourth of July holiday.

And it’s a move to also combat the rise of fast fashion.

Joining us now is Byard Winthrop.

He is American giants, founder and Ceo Byard.

It’s great to have you and congratulations on this partnership that you just reached with Walmart.

I’m curious what kind of insight you can give us just in terms of the ability, I guess the ease at which you have been able to 100% manufacture your items within the US and, and some of the biggest challenges maybe that you have had faced running up here and to ultimately uh reaching the significant partnership here with Walmart.

Well, thanks for having me on Shana.

You know, the the US textile base has been under a lot of pressure over the last 35 years, is so much of offshoring has hit that industry particularly hard.

Um And like a lot of other offshore manufacturing bases, um It is increasingly dependent on orders that are one month out, two months out with a real inability to invest longer term in the automation and innovation and job retraining and hiring that’s required to stay competitive uh on an international basis.

And so, um though this, this partnership with Walmart, um never easy to hit that kind of volume that Walmart requires.

Um it was a real breakthrough moment, I think for our brand and for textiles more broadly, when you have a partner, like Walmart, stepping up to a long term commitment and a volume commitment that allows uh the supply chain partners to really rethink the way they’re thinking about um producing apparel in the United States again.

So it’s an important moment, I think for the industry and for and for us as a brand and beer.

I, I guess two questions for you.

I’m just curious um first is what, why, you know, it was so important Bayer to you to, to make the product here in America.

Why was that such a, a core value to you?

A core mission?

And secondly, I’m just curious, Baer kind of just the economics of your business.

I mean, how much is more does it cost you to make the product here than it would if you, you know, did like so many of your rivals did and just made it overseas?

Well, well, it costs more.

Josh and I, and I would argue it should, I mean, I think one of the real benefits about manufacturing domestically is you, when you make things here, you do it within the constraints of the American system, which includes human rights protections, environmental protections, child labor protections, living wages, things that I think we all as Americans really.

And, and there’s a bit of an inconsistency in my judgment when we allow our biggest brands to manufacture overseas, getting around many of those constraints while we hold our domestic facilities to those uh those high standards, we got to pick a lane one or the other.

Um, and I felt the impact of that over the last 35 years was hitting middle class, working Americans really hard.

And um if we have as, as, as many of us know, middle class wages have been stagnant over the last 35 years.

Um And that dynamic doesn’t end well for America broadly.

And I think we have to start investing again into the communities that are making things here.

So we begin to give good opportunities to those towns, those cities that want to have good, viable and dignified work.

And so that, that was a real founding mission for, for our brand.

Um But, but maybe to the root of your question, it make it costs more to make things in the United States.

And that put, put uh most of American giants pricing in the premium end of the market.

And it really was out of reach for a lot of working Americans that need to have access to good quality products, ideally good quality American made products at places that make sense for them.

And this Walmart partnership really has broken into that tier in a, in a way that I had begun to wonder if it was going to be possible for us to do that without that kind of commitment and volume from a big partner like Walmart.

So it opens up a whole new consumer segment for us and it really has caused us to think really rethink and reimagine what a domestic textile capability can be.

And hopefully that challenge begins to make its way into the big brands in the US.

By.

Have you heard interest from other big brands to similarly try to take on by sorry, sorry to cut you off there.

You you dropped for a second on Mike, but Mike, my question is you certainly obviously now have this partnership with Walmart, are you having any sort of conversations?

Seeing some interest from some of the other larger brands at this point?

Iii I think the larger brands and retailers have as a generalized statement, have tried to be a part of the solution here and I think this now points a way forward for them to, to join the conversation.

So I I’ll leave it there, but I think there’s a lot of interest um but there’s been confusion about how to do it.

And I think this is a, this is a good example of how to get it done.

And so hopefully that’s gonna encourage others to join in all.

Have you been able to find it, it’s still a tight labor market.

It’s hard out.

It’s hard for employers really to find the labor that they need.

Are you, have you been able to hire the workers that you need to expand at the rate at which you were hoping to do?

Yeah.

It’s a good question.

I mean, I think we manufacture typically in, in rural and urban communities that need work.

And so we’ve been pretty lucky in that regard that there’s a lot of talented workers that are looking for good durable jobs by and large.

Uh We’ve been able to hire the people and the talent that we need.

Um So I think there’s lots of communities, maybe it doesn’t show up in the labor numbers, but a lot of communities that need, they need good employers there and, and where textiles are domiciled, it’s often in those communities that need that work.

And so we’ve had good success in that regard by, I’m curious, what’s next for your company?

Um Do you, do you wanna stay private or, or would you be considering testing the public markets at some point?

Uh You know, I I it’s not something I spend a lot of time thinking about other than to say, I think as a private entity, you’re allowed to make decisions that are longer term in nature.

And I think that’s pretty fundamental with an American manufactured footprint that you’re not beholden to quarterly reporting and you can think longer term.

So we tried to think of our investor base and our planning in that way.

And so I think that makes it likely that we will stay private for as far forward as I can see.

Bard, give us a sense of the broader retail landscape right now.

What are some of the trends that you’re seeing from the consumer?

Are you in fact seeing the consumer remain under pressure, maybe adjusting their spending as a result.

I I, you know, I I’m probably not the person to speak to that in a lot of depth.

I can just give you my anecdotal view of it, which is I think that in, in categories like apparel, I think the premium end of the market has been under some pressure.

Um I think that the consumers are looking for value now.

I think, I think the the uh the the pressure of inflation and day to day goods uh is, is hampering people’s ability to spend on things that are more discretionary.

And so we’re seeing at the high end of at least in our business, some pressure, we have a lot more activity at the lower end of our pricing paradigm and we expect to see that follow through in this Walmart Partnership as well.

Byard, it was great to have you on the show today.

Enjoy the fourth.

Thank you.

Happy fourth to you both, smartphone innovation has largely slowed it down over the past few years.

But A I could soon change all that.

At least that’s what smartphone makers are hoping.

Joining us now is Yahoo Finance’s very own, Dan Hale.

Dan.

That’s right.

Josh, we’re expected to see some big announcements from major companies in the coming weeks.

About A I and how it relates to their smartphones up first.

Uh is Samsung which is going to host its Galaxy unpacked event in Paris on July 10th.

They’re expected to announce some A I updates, potentially some of their new foldable phones uh as well.

And how A I fits into that Samsung’s already uh revealed its Galaxy A I that was part of its S 24 line of phones that came out earlier this year.

But there really weren’t too many big features uh that took really a lot of advantage of generative A I.

It was more about photo editing and uh translation apps.

Uh We also have Google coming in August with an event made by uh Google where they’re going to launch their next generation pixel smartphones.

They’re gonna obviously have a lot of A I uh to do with that.

Both companies have basically been saying uh in so many words, we’re having A I as part of these phones, it’s going to be a big part.

Samsung has a splash campaign.

They put out billboards across the world.

Google has a youtube uh ad saying exactly that.

Uh and so the companies really seem to be uh wanting to push A I front and center as the main reason for their new phones.

This is similar to what we’ve seen from Apple, which rolled out its Apple Intelligence last month uh at its WW DC event, that’s gonna be a big piece of their iphone 16 and smartphones going forward since the features only work on the iphone 15 pro line right now, not even the iphone 15.

So all three of these companies, big smartphone players, mostly Samsung and Apple, the two largest in the world are now going to be head going, head to head with A I.

It’s no longer gonna be uh not necessarily, not lo longer, but the focus isn’t gonna be as much on cameras or screen size.

It’s going to be about what A I can do.

Now, the big question is, do consumers care about that?

And I think what Apple laid out at WW DC was how generative A I can fit across its ecosystem and benefit consumers, not just be kind of a photo editing kind of feature that Samsung had initially rolled out Google as well.

Uh And so what I’m looking for for Samsung to do is to provide some kind of broader ecosystem features that would fit with generative A I.

But the, the big thing here I think is expect plenty of these companies to start talking up their A I capabilities even more so and putting them forward as a way for them to distinguish themselves from their competition.

All right, thank you, Dan.

Appreciate it.

Now, let’s take a look at what to watch for the rest of the week.

The markets will be closed tomorrow for the fourth of July holiday.

But there are some news to watch over the UK.

Tomorrow is election day in the United Kingdom.

British voters will elect a new prime minister and parliament and polls suggest it will be a landslide victory for the labor party.

Moving on to Friday, July 5th.

The full jobs report for June is coming out that morning.

Economists forecasting non farm payrolls to drop down to 190,000 while the unemployment rate holds steady at 4%.

Hourly wages also expected to grow by 0.3% slightly slower compared to the prior reading.

Now this coming after a better than expected jobs opening print yesterday in ad P employment though coming in lower than expected today and moving over to the fed, we get some fed commentary from New York fed President John Williams Friday morning, Williams is giving the keynote to a lecture organized by the Reserve Bank of India.

This coming after comments from Williams today in Portugal about the real neutral rate of interest expressing skepticism that the neutral rate has risen.

Happy birthday to meta’s threads.

The social media site turning one this week, its launch began with a bang meta scooped up nearly 100 million or 100 monthly act 100 million monthly active users.

I believe in the first three months of threads launch.

But since then growth has slowed meta Ceo Mark Zuckerberg announcing this morning that the app owes more than 100 and 75 million monthly users.

Now, the app was originally marketed, it’s a quote unquote friendlier version of X, the site formerly known as Twitter.

And there’s still a wide gap between the two X A and March and it sees around 550 million users monthly here.

So again, they’ve got a ways to go to catch up.

We talked a lot about it.

Threads was debuted.

You tried threads?

I’ve tried it.

Have you?

Yeah, I, I did.

You know, it’s not something I check regularly, but I have dabbled with it a little bit.

Yeah, I’m not, let’s just say, I’m not really surprised that we haven’t seen dramatic growth here over the last year.

Well, that is a wrap on today’s market domination over time.

Be sure to come back Friday at 3:30 p.m. Eastern for market domination have a great fourth of July.