Welcome to the weekly Market News Roundup 🗞️ — hoping everyone had a great Thanksgiving week. Here’s the agenda for today’s quick stock market news review:

1. 🖼️ big picture: this week’s overall market sentiment

2. 📊 interesting set-ups: a few stocks worth watching

3. 🔭 Market Mood™ outlook for the week(s) ahead

I. Overall News Sentiment 🖼️

• Overall news: +30% sentiment, bullish 🟢

• S&P 500 (large cap) news: +26% sentiment, bullish 🟢Russell 2000 (small cap) news: +67% sentiment, highly bullish 🟢

♨️ Markets move upwards after pausing last week

• The major US stock indexes all posted weekly gains between 1-2% after ending the previous week relatively unchanged, with the Dow and S&P 500 again outpacing the NASDAQ and Russell 2000 to extend the year-to-date outperformance of large cap value stocks.

• With last week’s result, the S&P 500 has now risen more than 12% from its October low. Technical analysts took note that the index has now approached both its all-time high trendline and its 200-day simple moving average (SMA) price point resistance; with many expecting the upcoming week to trend downward.

📝 Fed’s meeting minutes come out reassuringly positive

• A major catalyst of this week’s market rebound was the release of meeting minutes from the US Federal Reserve’s recent FOMC policy meeting, which showed that most Fed officials are leaning towards a slower pace of interest rate hikes going forward.1

• The past four FOMC meetings have resulted in major interest rate hikes of 0.75% each, so any slowdown in this pace of increase is a good signal that the US should be past the worst of its inflationary pressures and moving towards recovery.

😷 China’s renewed COVID lockdowns spark mass protests

• In response to China’s drastic zero-Covid lockdown restrictions of the past week, riots and mass protests have broken out across from Shanghai to Beijing, the scale of which has not been seen in recent history.

• Both the lockdown & ensuing protests have sparked concern about potentially major global supply-chain disruptions that could mount in the following weeks if the world’s largest national economy remains disrupted.

📰 Other noteworthy headlines:

• National Retail Federation expects holiday sales to rise 6-8% vs. last year

• US crude oil falls another -5%, trading below $77 per barrel

• Biden administration extends pause on federal student loans through June

• Former Disney CEO Bog Iger returns to the healm

• More company-specific headlines from our friends at BullishRippers

II. Stocks to Watch 🔥🧊

Now, a quick look at two notable stocks to keep an eye on based on their sentiment detected in stock market news coverage this week:

SoFi (SOFI) 🏦 bearish sentiment 🔴

this week: 🔻-97% news sentiment | 🔻-16% stock price | view news profile 📰

San Francisco-based fintech company SoFi ended this week highly bearish in market news coverage (-97%) and dropped in stock price (-16%) after the company was hit by two major government events. The first was the Biden administration's announcement to pause federal student loan payments through mid-2023; a move that will almost assuredly result in lower revenues & earnings for lenders like SoFi.

The second adverse event for SoFi this week was a probe from Democratic lawmakers on the US Senate Banking Committee, urging federal regulators to monitor SoFi’s involvement in cryptocurrency trading in the wake of the FTX-spurred crypto meltdown. The scrutiny over SoFi’s business practices is somewhat unique, stemming from the fact that the company operates as both a bank holding company and as a crypto exchange. Meanwhile, SoFi has since responded to the probe by claiming that it has been fully compliant with “all applicable laws.”

top SOFI article(s) this week:

Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) 💱 bullish sentiment 🟢

this week: 🔺+76% news sentiment | 🔺+1.5% stock price | view news profile 📰

When it comes to value stocks, no one has managed to do it better than ol’ Warren & Charlie at Berkshire Hathaway. The Oracles of Omaha made positive headlines this week while $BRK.B stock finished highly optimistic in news coverage (+76%), following from the company’s recent investments overseas. Last week, Berkshire announced that it has purchased a $4.1B stake in Taiwan Semiconductor (one of the world’s largest chipmakers); a rare foray into the tech sector for the somewhat old-fashioned conglomerate.

Berkshire followed this up by announcing a separate investment in Japan’s five biggest trading houses the following day, bringing their stake to more than 6% ownership in each. Overall, Berkshire has invested a total of more than $9B in Q3 2022 alone, doubling down and taking advantage of the market’s downtrodden valuations. Keep in mind, while the S&P 500 has decline -13% over the past 12-months, Berkshire’s stock has risen +12% over the same period.

top Berkshire article(s) this week:

III. Market Mood™ Outlook 🔭

Finally, a quick think about what’s on the horizon:

🗓️ One final round of Q3 earnings reports

• Coming out of the shortened Thanksgiving week, we look forward to one more relatively slow Q3 earnings report schedule; major reports to keep an eye on will be from Crowdstrike , Snowflake , Salesforce , and Intuit

📊 More inflationary data from the PCE Index

• On the inflation front, we’ll be keeping an eye out for the personal consumption expenditures’ (PCE) price index expected Thursday to see whether the recent trend of easing inflation continues to hold. On a monthly basis, PCE is expected to show a 0.4% rise in October, up from 0.3% during the prior month.2

• Over the prior year, PCE inflation is expected to have eased to a rate of 6% from 6.2% previously; according to Bank of America’s November fund manager survey, investors d not expect the Fed to pivot until US PCE falls below 4%.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Monthly employment report expected Friday

• the monthly US labor market update from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics is expected be released Friday. Analysts are estimating that non-farm payrolls rose by 200,000 last month — if realized, this would mark another downtrend in the labor market, but reflect still-robust hiring on a historical basis. Looking back, the economy generated a better-than-expected 261,000 jobs in October, down from 315,000 in November.

As always, the future remains to be seen — let us know if there’s anything we missed by commenting below, replying to this email, or emailing us directly at [email protected]. And if you liked this post, please support us by clicking the like button! Best of luck to all of you in the markets this week, stay safe out there, and thank you for reading. 😎

Disclaimer: This is not financial advice or recommendation for any investment. The content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Credit to the respective teams cited below: