The S&P 500 was down for the second week in a row as it closed Friday at 5,967. In a holiday-shortened week, headlines about the Israel/Iran war and the U.S. role dominated the news. It looked like there was an exhale of a deep breath as these tensions remained in the forefront, but seemed to have calmed down over the weekend. As such the S&P 500 gapped up at the open and made an intraday high of 6,050 about one hour into the trading day. Tuesday there was a call for unconditional surrender for Iran, and the S&P 500 gave back the majority of Mondays gains and fell below the 6,000 level again. Wednesday morning the S&P 500 regained that 6,000 threshold, but then sold off in the afternoon after the central bank kept interest rates steady and Fed Chair Powell signaled it would wait to see the impact of tariffs on inflation. And again back below 6,000 for the S&P 500. Thursday the markets were closed for Juneteenth, but Trump did state that he would decide on U.S. war participation within the next two weeks. On Friday the markets responded with another gap up at the open and crossed 6,000, again, but then sold off, again, hitting a S&P 500 intraday low of 5,952. From a technical perspective youve probably noticed that weve mentioned 6,000 many times in the above daily recap. And it also turned out that Monday and Fridays intraday high and low turned into the intraweek high and low. With about a 100 point distance between that S&P 500 peak and trough, that makes it the narrowest weekly range in 2025. Which brings us to consolidation as evidenced by the S&P 500s 10 day Exponential Moving Average (EMA) crossing below its 20 day Simple Moving Average (SMA) on Tuesday. So now lets look at next week and beyond. Mid-week we have Fed Chair Powell addressing Congress, and hell probably reiterate topics from Wednesdays speech. And then Core PCE inflation on Friday. The first week of July the markets will close at 1300 on Thursday for the July 4th weekend. And then we have tariffs and wars hanging over us and pressuring the markets. As such, we might not see much movement until earnings season begins in mid-July, making the case for a breakout to the upside more tenuous. For TSP TIPS the I fund remains at the top of the Performance Ranking (PR) leaderboard, but we did see a decrease in the score. It also saw its price and 10 EMA cross below its 20 SMA. That said, both the C and S funds also saw decreases in their PR scores. As such we are recommending new investment mixes raising cash levels in all three models.
The S&P 500 was down for the second week in a row as it closed Friday at 5,967. In a holiday-shortened week, headlines about the Israel/Iran war and the U.S. role dominated the news. It looked like there was an exhale of a deep breath as these tensions remained in the forefront, but seemed to have calmed down over the weekend. As such the S&P 500 gapped up at the open and made an intraday high of 6,050 about one hour into the trading day. Tuesday there was a call for unconditional surrender for Iran, and the S&P 500 gave back the majority of Mondays gains and fell below the 6,000 level again. Wednesday morning the S&P 500 regained that 6,000 threshold, but then sold off in the afternoon after the central bank kept interest rates steady and Fed Chair Powell signaled it would wait to see the impact of tariffs on inflation. And again back below 6,000 for the S&P 500. Thursday the markets were closed for Juneteenth, but Trump did state that he would decide on U.S. war participation within the next two weeks. On Friday the markets responded with another gap up at the open and crossed 6,000, again, but then sold off, again, hitting a S&P 500 intraday low of 5,952. From a technical perspective youve probably noticed that weve mentioned 6,000 many times in the above daily recap. And it also turned out that Monday and Fridays intraday high and low turned into the intraweek high and low. With about a 100 point distance between that S&P 500 peak and trough, that makes it the narrowest weekly range in 2025. Which brings us to consolidation as evidenced by the S&P 500s 10 day Exponential Moving Average (EMA) crossing below its 20 day Simple Moving Average (SMA) on Tuesday. So now lets look at next week and beyond. Mid-week we have Fed Chair Powell addressing Congress, and hell probably reiterate topics from Wednesdays speech. And then Core PCE inflation on Friday. The first week of July the markets will close at 1300 on Thursday for the July 4th weekend. And then we have tariffs and wars hanging over us and pressuring the markets. As such, we might not see much movement until earnings season begins in mid-July, making the case for a breakout to the upside more tenuous. For TSP TIPS the I fund remains at the top of the Performance Ranking (PR) leaderboard, but we did see a decrease in the score. It also saw its price and 10 EMA cross below its 20 SMA. That said, both the C and S funds also saw decreases in their PR scores. As such we are recommending new investment mixes raising cash levels in all three models.