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“When the facts change, I change my mind.” – John Maynard Keynes

Futures are lower to kick off the week, but it’s nothing like last Monday and we’re also well off the lows from earlier.  It’s a slow start, but we have a busy week of economic data ahead as well as a ton of earnings reports, and don’t forget about the FOMC meeting on Wednesday.

Read today’s Morning Lineup for a recap of all the major market news and events from around the world, the latest US and international COVID trends including our vaccination trackers, and much more.

There’s an old sketch from Saturday Night Live called “Mr. Short Term Memory” where Tom Hanks plays a character with a disorder where he has a limited short-term memory.  As you might expect, the segment made for a few laughs when the character was in various situations like visiting a friend in the hospital or as a contestant on a game show.  Looking at the market last week, it appears as though Mr. Short Term Memory is a guiding force in the market.  Just a week ago, Dow futures were already down more than 500 points and the yield on the 10-year US Treasury was plummeting on concerns of rising COVID cases from the Delta variant.  By Tuesday, though, those concerns were all water under the bridge as all of the major US averages not only finished in the green for the week, but they were all up over 1% as well.

Leading the way higher, the Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) rallied nearly 3% putting the index nearly 7% above its 50-day moving average.  Even the Russell 2000 (IWM), which at one point on Monday was down over 10% from its record high, managed to finish the week up by more than 2%.  Despite the rally, though, most small and mid-cap indices remain below their 50-day moving averages.  However, despite all the commentary regarding the underperformance of small caps recently, they are still comfortably positive on the year, and besides IWM, there is a fairly strong degree of uniformity in YTD performance across the various market cap ranges.