Mike Santoli's market notes: Tech fails to rescue, jobless claims not good, banks wheezing

Published Thu, Jul 9 20201:54 PM EDT

This is the daily notebook of Mike Santoli, CNBC's senior markets commentator, with ideas about trends, stocks and market statistics. The bond market denied cyclical stocks permission to rally, and so far monster-cap tech is not quite up to rescuing the indexes. Jobless claims were no great surprise either way , but 1.4 million new claims is an awful lot months after the shutdown orders and companies are now trimming payrolls opportunistically, it seems. Certainly the numbers didn't impress Treasury traders, with 10-year yield back down to 0.62% and the 2-year back near one-month lows. Banks continue to gasp and wheeze under this stress, the KBW Bank index off 3.2% and has recovered only about a quarter of what it lost in the Feb-March crash. The S & P 500 unable to make any progress above 3170 level after three tries in four days, reinforcing the trading-range notion. Noted yesterday how the pattern was roughly following what happened a month ago: Rally on a strong response to a good jobs report, upside follow-through the subsequent Monday, failed rallies Tue/Wed, then a Thursday dump. This today is a very mild little drop compared to June 11, but watching… Source: FactSet Nasdaq still firmly outperforming again, so the general choreography and leadership profile of this market hasn't changed. Issue is, Nasdaq-100 is getting quite stretched to the upside (22% above its 200-day average, widest spread at a new high since 2000), its advance has become quite narrow and tons of options speculation concentrated in tech making things again appear frothy. Ongoing reassessment of reopening pace and recovery path is draining enthusiasm out of the travel-and-service-sector groups. The travel/entertainment ETF (hotels, restaurants, airlines, theme parks) is down again today and off 11 percent in a month. VIX unable to break much below 30, still showing some wariness. It's still above the levels where systematic hedge funds start to ramp their equity exposure, which is keeping some quaint money sidelined.

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., March 20, 2020.

Lucas Jackson | Reuters

This is the daily notebook of Mike Santoli, CNBC's senior markets commentator, with ideas about trends, stocks and market statistics.

The bond market denied cyclical stocks permission to rally, and so far monster-cap tech is not quite up to rescuing the indexes.
Jobless claims were no great surprise either way, but 1.4 million new claims is an awful lot months after the shutdown orders and companies are now trimming payrolls opportunistically, it seems. Certainly the numbers didn't impress Treasury traders, with 10-year yield back down to 0.62% and the 2-year back near one-month lows.