Wall Street’s best week since April, and the print that sealed it was a bad one. The July jobs report, released Friday, showed the economy shedding jobs, and stocks celebrated because it pushes away the rate hike three Fed members were calling for two weeks ago. Here’s the data from the week that closed and the agenda for the one ahead, which turns on Wednesday’s CPI.
What the ES, the NQ and bitcoin did
The ES (S&P 500 futures) tracked a cash index that closed Friday at 7,757.64 points (+0.62% on the session) for a record close, and gained 3.6% on the week. The bulk of the move came at the start, not the finish: Monday the 3rd closed at 7,600.50 (+1.48%) and Tuesday the 4th at 7,736.52 (+1.79%), after Monday started from a low of 7,504.78. Wednesday (-0.17%, 7,723.55) and Thursday (-0.18%, 7,709.96) were digestion, three consecutive closes between 7,700 and 7,740.
One detail the headline leaves out. Friday didn’t set the week’s high. Wednesday the 5th the cash index reached 7,793.68, and Friday stopped at 7,763.08. A record close, yes, but below the intraday high from two days earlier.
The NQ (Nasdaq 100 futures) drew the same shape with more amplitude. The Nasdaq Composite closed Friday at 26,690.62 points (+1.30%) and advanced 5.2% on the week. Again the strength was front-loaded: +2.13% Monday (25,913.90) and +2.59% Tuesday (26,584.99), then two red sessions (-0.83% Wednesday and -0.06% Thursday). And again Wednesday’s high, 26,739.00, stayed above Friday’s high of 26,712.62.
Friday’s trigger was the July jobs report. The economy shed 23,000 payrolls when economists polled by Reuters expected 80,000 added, and the revisions were worse than the print itself: May came down by 66,000 (from +129,000 to +63,000) and June by 37,000 (from +57,000 to +20,000). Unemployment fell to 4.1% from June’s 4.2%, with the participation rate at 61.4%, so the improvement came from people leaving the labor force. With rates in the 3.50%-3.75% range and three dissents at the July meeting calling for a hike, a cooling labor market read as one hike less. The 10-year Treasury closed Friday at 4.657%.
Bitcoin took back what the previous week’s options expiry had cost it. It closed Friday at $64,914.7 (+0.95% on the session), with a daily high of 65,373.2 and a low of 64,167.7. The ladder of closes built through the week: 63,510.2 Monday, 64,096.2 Tuesday, 64,651.2 Wednesday and 64,303.6 Thursday. Over seven days it gained roughly 2.8%, and the $64,000 it had lost on the prior expiry was back underneath price by Tuesday.
Next week’s agenda
A prices week. The Fed doesn’t meet again until September 15-16, with a Summary of Economic Projections attached, per the official FOMC calendar.
- Tuesday 11: July existing home sales. Treasury auctions $58 billion in 3-year notes.
- Wednesday 12: July CPI at 8:30 New York time, per the BLS release schedule. In June the headline index fell 0.4% on the month and stood at 3.5% year over year, with core at 2.6%. A $39 billion 10-year auction lands the same day, and Cisco reports after the close.
- Thursday 13: July PPI and weekly jobless claims, both at 8:30. A $22 billion 30-year auction. Applied Materials reports after the close.
- Friday 14: July retail sales at 8:30 and the preliminary University of Michigan confidence reading at 10:00.
The next jobs report, for August, doesn’t land until September 4. Until then, the inflation data runs the show.
How to read this agenda with order flow
Without a platform in front of me I can’t tell you what the tape did, so what follows is levels and questions worth having marked before the week opens.
- Wednesday’s CPI is the protocol event. With the Fed on hold and the market pricing out a September hike after the jobs report, a hot inflation print reopens exactly the debate Friday closed. If you plan to trade it, the mechanics are in the news trading with order flow guide: smaller size, wait for the first reaction to dry up, and let the flow confirm before you enter.
- Last Wednesday’s highs are the pending exam. Both the ES and the NQ finished the week up near the top without taking out the intraday high they left on the 5th. If price returns there and finds no seller, the extension continues. If it pokes through and gets it handed straight back in the same session, you have the pattern the false breakouts guide describes, and the volume trapped just above marks the level the market tends to come back to.
- Three closes packed between 7,700 and 7,740 left business behind. That’s the kind of area where the week’s POC plants itself, and if CPI pushes price out of it, where it moves in the following sessions is the thing to watch. The reading is in POC migration: the highest-volume level chasing price confirms the move, and sitting still contradicts it.
- In bitcoin, $64,000 is a declared floor again. Price lost it on July 31 and took it back this week, so the next visit to the level decides whether the reclaim was real or a range bounce. How to look at its 24/7 microstructure is covered in bitcoin order flow.
Short version: the market walks into CPI with a record close in the S&P that isn’t yet a record intraday, a Nasdaq doing the pushing, and an employment picture that rewrote the Fed script in a single morning. Mark last Wednesday’s levels before next Wednesday arrives.