The yellow metal is up 10% this year. (0:15) History says a rate HIKE could come in June. (1:36) McDonald's comps surprise. (2:07)Show NotesSuper Micro Computer stock up almost 50% heading into earningsNvidia named Tactical Outperform by EvercoreDavid Tepper's Appaloosa beefs up China betsEpisode transcripts: seekingalpha.com/wsb Sign up for our daily newsletter here and for full access to analyst ratings, stock quant scores, dividend grades, subscribe to Seeking Alpha Premium at seekingalpha.com/subscriptions.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Lunch, our afternoon update on today's market action, news, and analysis. Good afternoon. Today is Monday, February 10th, and I'm your host, Kim Kahn. Our top story so far. Gold topped $2,900 per ounce as it hit another record with cash moving to safety. Spot gold hit an intraday high of more than 2910 before easing back.
Chapter 2: Why are gold prices reaching record highs?
It finished 1.9% higher last week, the metal's sixth consecutive weekly gain. ING says tariff concerns that risk higher inflation and slower economic growth are spurring demand for safe haven assets like gold. Gold is up nearly 10% year-to-date. ANSI Research notes that the potential for gold getting caught up in tit-for-tat tariffs is causing a dislocation in the physical market.
Gold in the Bank of England vault is trading at a discount to the wider market. This has seen week-long queues to withdraw the metal, they said. In today's trading, stocks are higher, with the Nasdaq doing the best among the major averages, up 1%. The AI trade is getting jiggy, with Supermicrocomputer rallying again.
Chapter 3: What are the current trends in the stock market?
The stock is up 45% in the past five trading sessions, including today, and the company reports earnings on Tuesday. and NVIDIA was added to Evercore's tactical outperform list ahead of earnings at the end of the month. Analyst Mark Lapasis says concerns over DeepSeq lowering aggregate demand are not true and that its lower cost is evolutionary rather than revolutionary.
Chapter 4: How is NVIDIA performing in the market?
In addition, the lower cost in compute is likely to result in increased demand for tokens, which should result in larger parameter models and an acceleration of multimodal tokens. In the bond market, rates are a little changed as traders wait for Fed Chief Jay Powell's appearance on Capitol Hill Tuesday. He returns Wednesday, along with the CPI numbers.
While everyone is trying to gauge when the next Fed rate cut will come, Torsten Slocke, chief economist at investment firm Apollo Global Management, said, says the market could begin for a shock rate hike.
Chapter 5: What are the expectations for the Federal Reserve's next move?
The last Fed cut was in December, and the number of months from the final Fed cut to the first Fed hike has historically been as low as seven months, implying that the Fed could hike rates already in June, Sluck said. Among active stocks, McDonald's is topping the Dow gainers after its comparable sales numbers for Q4 overshadowed misses on the top and bottom lines.
Chapter 6: How did McDonald's perform in its latest earnings report?
Total comps rose 0.4%, better than the 0.9% decline analysts had predicted. Looking ahead, the company said it expects the 2025 operating margin percent to be in the mid-to-high 40% range. Rockwell Automation is the top S&P gainer after the industrial automation company reported better-than-expected earnings. If the daily gain of more than 10% holds, it'll be the biggest since July 2022.
For its fiscal 2025, Rockwell repeated its adjusted earnings outlook of $860 to $980 a share, while cutting the midpoint of its sales forecast to $8.1 billion from $8.2 billion. Analysts forecast adjusted earnings of $926 a share on revenue of $8.12 billion.
An on-semiconductor is slumping after the Chipmunker forecasted current quarter guidance below estimates, while also falling short of fourth quarter expectations. For the ongoing first quarter, OnSemi guided non-GAAP diluted EPS to between $0.45 and $0.55, well below the Wall Street estimate of $0.90.
Revenue expectations of $1.35 billion to $1.45 billion were also below the consensus of $1.69 billion. In other news of note, David Tepper's Appaloosa Management Hedge Fund took a new 1.5 million share position in Corning during the last quarter of 2024, according to a 13F filing, and it closed out its Adobe stake.
The fund further boosted its holdings in several Chinese tech stocks, including Alibaba, JD.com, and KE Holdings. Stakes were also increased in NVIDIA, Uber, and AMD. Decreased positions include Meta Platforms, Intel, and Amazon. And in the Wall Street Research corner, U.S. Infotech saw the largest net buying from hedge funds since December 2021 this past week.
According to Goldman Sachs Prime Services, the buying was driven by both short covers and long buys at a ratio of 1.5 to 1. The sector was also net bought every single day of the week, and all technology subsectors were net bought, led in notional terms by software, semiconductors, and semi-equipment, and to a lesser extent, infotech services. The U.S.
information technology long-short ratio stands at 1.91 compared to 1.75 at the start of 2025, which is in the 61st percentile compared to the past year, and in the 21st percentile versus the past five years. That's all for today's Wall Street Lunch. Look for links for stories in the show notes section. Don't forget, these episodes will be up with transcriptions at SeekingAlpha.com.
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