Market Snapshot

River1 Asset Management
March 18, 2025

Morning Note

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Calendar

This Week – The two biggies were retail sales out this morning (weak, not a shock), and the Fed Wednesday which has 0% chance of a cut, but they could signal.

Tuesday – Housing Starts (1.5M vs1.38M est), NVDA/GTC

Wednesday – Fed Day

Thursday – Jobless Claims, Philly Fed, Existing Home Sales, NKE, FDX, MU, LEN Earnings

Trading Observations

Weaker close than we would like, but 87% up vol day following 90% up vol day broke the back of the selling and seemingly takes a waterfall scenario off the table
In addition, >90% trading above 5-day ma, the most since 12/23 https://tinyurl.com/m3n8beu2 [tinyurl.com]
Total put/call now 8 days in a row over 0.9, even with 2 big up days is uncharacteristic
CTA now net buyers over next month (IF we continue to rally) https://tinyurl.com/bder9kas [tinyurl.com]
Long/short hedgies least long since at least 2020 https://tinyurl.com/yb63py95 [tinyurl.com]
While relief welcome, history still suggests retest of the lows over next 2-6 weeks
Fed tomorrow (if QT ends by May, is that enough to appease market?) https://tinyurl.com/y42xadyf [tinyurl.com]
Tariffs April 2nd will drive the path
S&P CLOSED above 5665, opening the door to 5740 resistance with 5850 being more formidable vs. 5560 and 5400 below
US equity positioning lowest since early 2023 https://tinyurl.com/48kb7u42 [tinyurl.com]
Housing percolating negatively in the background as more data points pile up https://tinyurl.com/bdeu9w4z [tinyurl.com]

Futures

DOW -105

S&P -21

Nasdaq -111

Charts/Sentiment

CNN Fear/Greed Index

U.S. 10 Year Treasury

ICE Brent Crude

Bitcoin

Financials / Retail / Healthcare

Retail Sales Data – February restaurant retail sales decelerated 7% from January and are down 2-3% QTD. Bad for TOST.

Baird on Credit Card Net Charge Offs – Net charge offs 3 bps and DQs up 1 bps m/m. They are defending the names despite the incremental negative info on valuation.

JPM – Equity trading profits look to be up 30% QTD on Trump whipsaws.

XYZ – Upgraded to buy at KBW on good risk/reward. Hard to disagree looking at this chart.

WTW – Upgraded at UBS on improving margins.

Technology

NVDA/GTC: Jensen keynote @ 1pm ET has been circled on ppl's calendars for months ... DEMAND remains extremely robust, rack bottlenecks resolved, and NVDA pulling in B300/GB300 (Blackwell Ultra) timing by ~1Q with significant volumes likely in Q3'25 .... Cloud commentary makes it clear that everyone in cloud was hardware constrained last qtr, indicating clear pent up demand for Blackwell.

AI CHIP UNWIND: AMD, INTC alpha leaders versus NVDA, Broadcom lagging ... popular pairs

AMZN: -1.1% early laggard within Mag6 ... Cleveland out negative saying QTD appears softer than Q4, mainly driven by overall softer retail environment. Clev is at 8% y/y growth vs street at 8.4% and previous estimate of 9%. This jives with what Yipit has been telling us, which has lowered their estimate from 2ppts ahead of street to <1% over the last couple of weeks for NA retail.

AMZN reportedly considering cutting 14K managerial positions by end of March

AMZN / NVDA - Amazon Undercuts Nvidia With Aggressive AI Chip Discounts

GOOGL: in talks to buy startup Wiz for $30B (WSJ). Largest acquisition by Google ever.

INTC: +1.1% powering higher as sentiment cont to rise with Lip-Bu Tan behind the wheel ... the optimism around Tan is in part a reflection of how far Intel has fallen, with the stock down about 60% from its peak in early 2000, erasing more than $330 billion in market value for investors

RDDT: wild Monday ... closed -2%; Redburn initiated at sell. Then the stock spiked 10% as Bloomberg captured a headline about RDDT and GOOGL inking a deal with Vertex AI, but they then retracted it as that deal was done in Feb 2024

BIDU boosted by release of two new AI models.

LYFT / UBER Waymo receives approval to operate fully autonomously in expanded California areas. Waymo commented in a post on X about the approval from the CA DMV, which includes “expanded South Bay areas, including almost all of San Jose.”

Industrials

BAH/Shield AI: Booz Allen and Shield AI Partnership to Bring New Autonomous Airborne Solutions to U.S. Military

BYD shares hit record high after rolling out new ultra-fast EV chargers

TSLA: rallies cont to be sold .... Fundamental data pts remain terrible - M-sci called out weakness in international orders and Mizuho said TSLA’s feb sales underperformed significantly in US EU and China + softer than expected demand for Model Y refresh

TSLA headlines: (1)offering a free trial of its Full Self-Driving (FSD) product in China from 3/17-4/16 (Reuters) ... (2)Tesla placed a “containment hold” on Cybertruck deliveries as it addresses complaints about glued panels coming undone (NY Post) …. (3) Toronto to no longer provide financial incentives for Teslas, Reuters reports