Latest / Markets with Megan: A Quick Financial Markets Update / Equity Euphoria or Economic Mirage? July Recap | S2 E066 | 08-07-25

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Equity Euphoria or Economic Mirage? July Recap | S2 E066 | 08-07-25 · Markets with Megan: A Quick Financial Markets Update

• 0:00
  Megan Horneman: The month of July was all sunshine.
• 0:02
  Megan Horneman: If you're a US equity investor, it's Markets with Megan, and this is Thursday, august the 7th.
• 0:07
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• 0:10
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• 0:11
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• 0:14
  Megan Horneman: We wanted to give you a quick review of what we saw in the month of July, not only from an equity market perspective, a bond market perspective, but also from an economic standpoint.
• 0:24
  Megan Horneman: So let's dig in very quickly.
• 0:26
  Megan Horneman: The S&P 500 itself made 15 record highs for the year.
• 0:30
  Megan Horneman: Through the month of July we saw that not only the Russell 1000 or that S&P 500 index, both these large cap indices they've outperformed their value counterparts and that's been because we still get this momentum trade driven by AI, but also we kicked off earnings season, which this earnings season for second quarter is coming in much better than expected.
• 0:55
  Megan Horneman: We did get some information from the labor market that the labor market continues to weaken.
• 1:01
  Megan Horneman: So there's this optimism that the Fed will be able to cut interest rates in September.
• 1:05
  Megan Horneman: So that also boosted that growth trade over the value trade.
• 1:10
  Megan Horneman: We did see that the US markets outperformed the international markets for the month of July and a lot of that has to do with the fact that the technology sector is very heavily weighted in the US, more weighted in US equities than in the developed international and since it was a lot of a tech trade that did help US equities over their developed market counterparts.
• 1:33
  Megan Horneman: When you do look at the bond market, we saw bond markets relatively muted for the month.
• 1:38
  Megan Horneman: There was this tug of war between some mixed inflation data and then some weakening economic data and what that might mean for the Fed, so bond markets did produce some modest returns here.
• 1:52
  Megan Horneman: When you look at the commodity side of the market, we saw the commodity index.
• 1:57
  Megan Horneman: It was down for the third time in the last four months.
• 2:00
  Megan Horneman: That was primarily due to the industrial metals, a lot of volatility around copper prices.
• 2:06
  Megan Horneman: They fell the most since June of 2022.
• 2:09
  Megan Horneman: And that was because of tariffs and this back and forth and getting a little bit more clarity around what the tariffs do mean.
• 2:16
  Megan Horneman: The dollar it actually did appreciate for the first time this year and that was driven by some of the positivity around trade negotiations towards the end of the month as we approach that August 1st deadline and we've got some trade deals, at least frameworks, put forth from some of our key allies.
• 2:34
  Megan Horneman: That's all we have today.
• 2:36
  Megan Horneman: If you want a history of our podcast, you can go to marketswithmeganfm.
• 2:39
  Megan Horneman: Thank you.