Little movement

Briefing.com Summary:

*The market remains fixated on Fed Chair Powell’s speech on Friday.

*July Housing Starts data was not as good as the headlines suggest.

*Home Depot posted mixed results (missed on quarterly earnings and reaffirmed its FY26 outlook).

The major indices did not have much to show for yesterday’s trade by the end of it, and the way things look in the equity futures market, the major indices are unlikely to have much to show for themselves at the start of today’s trading.

Currently, the S&P 500 futures are down four points and are trading 0.1% below fair value, the Nasdaq 100 futures are down 44 points and are trading 0.2% below fair value, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average futures are up 88 points and are trading 0.2% above fair value.

The market’s orientation seemingly remains geared toward Friday and what Fed Chair Powell might have to say about the policy outlook in the wake of last week’s inflation data.

There has been little movement on Dow component Home Depot’s (HD) earnings report (missed on quarterly earnings but reaffirmed its FY26 outlook).

There has been little movement on Palo Alto Network’s (PANW) earnings report (beat on quarterly earnings and issued above-consensus guidance for Q1 and FY26).

There has been little movement on the update that a security guarantee for Ukraine will be drafted and that efforts are underway to arrange a trilateral meeting between Presidents Trump, Putin, and Zelensky.

There has been little movement on the news that Standard & Poor’s affirmed the U.S. sovereign rating of AA+ with a stable outlook.

There has been little movement on a Housing Starts and Building Permits Report for July that looked encouraging on the surface but not as encouraging within the details.

Specifically, housing starts increased 5.2% month-over-month in July to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.428 million units (Briefing.com consensus: 1.311 million), with single-unit starts up 2.8% and multi-unit starts up 9.9%. Building permits decreased 2.8% month-over-month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.354 million units (Briefing.com consensus: 1.390 million), with single-unit permits up 0.5% and multi-unit permits down 8.2%.

The key takeaway from the report is that there wasn’t much strength in single-unit starts or permits, which is relatively disappointing in the context of a housing market that needs more affordable, single-family homes for sale. In fact, single-unit starts were down in all regions except the South (+13.2%).

The 2-yr note yield is down two basis points to 3.75%, and the 10-yr note yield is down two basis points to 4.32%.

Separately, there has been some movement in Tegna (TGNA), which is up 4.5% following the news that Nextstar Media Group (NXST) is going to acquire the company for $22.00 per share amid a separate Wall Street Journal report that Sinclair (SBGI) might want to merge its television business with Tegna, and there has been some movement in Intel (INTC), which is up 5.5% on the news that Softbank is making a $2 billion investment in Intel common stock.

There is movement in individual stocks per usual, but the broader market is still in need of a push.

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Originally Posted August 19, 2025 – Little movement