The Q - Daily Edition - 07/03/2026
Celebrating Unemployment
“Sooner or later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.”
— Robert Louis Stevenson
Good morning!
I just watched (with half an eye) an interview of a Switzerland Football team supporter, who post the 2-0 win of his team over Algeria, was celebrating that he is unemployed, which allowed him to watch the game in public viewing at 5 am and drink some beers along the way. Good on him!
Similarly, the US equity market, or at least parts of it, celebrated a lower non-farm payroll number (i.e. less-than-expected people found employment in June):
However, initial joy did not last long (as it also will not for our Swiss fan, once the hangover hits), and stocks came under pressure shortly after cash trading opened. Same S&P 500 intraday-graph as above again, but full time line:
The weakness was mostly produced by the tech sector, and within there the semiconductor stocks, which found little love in yesterday’s session:
To add insult to injury (for tech stocks) the Dow Jones Industrial index, aka Papa Dow, actually hit a new ATH yesterday,
leaving a market picture of three speeds yesterday:
As a final comment in the equity section, it is to be noted that breadth was widely bullish AGAIN in yesterday’s session,
at the same time where investors’ sentiment (AAII) was benign,
which reaffirms our view that July will see stocks rally higher:
US bond yields reacted (by going lower) to the weak NFP number initially, but by the end of the session, it was a big fat nothing burger:
A more hefty reaction came from currency traders, which pushed the US Dollar lower, as the outlook for higher interest rates softened. The Dollar Index is falling back to the 100 level, previously the upper resistance of the multi-month trading range, now turned support:
Gold was hence one of the main beneficiaries of real rates contracting and the greenback softening:
There’s much more of course, but this will have to do for today, or else, the QuiCQ would stop being QuiCQ 😜…
This fascinating chart from RenMac below suggest that those waiting for EPS to miss or downward revisions to confirm a top, may be flying right into the side of a mountain, just like back in the year 2000. Prices peaked in March, EPS kept rising into 2001 …
Stay tuned …
With the US celebrating a double Independence Day this year (Happy 250th Birthday!) and therefore bond and equity markets closed in the land of the free, it should be a fairly quiet, low-volume session for other markets.
Enjoy your weekend!
André
Everything in this document is for educational purposes only (FEPO)
Nothing in this document should be considered investment advice
Investing real money can be costly; don’t do stupid shit
Leave politics at the door—markets don’t care.
Past performance is hopefully no indication of future performance
The views expressed in this document may differ from the views published by NPB Neue Privat Bank AG