S&P 500 posted the 2nd-best weekly gain since November 2023. Weekly market recap, trading week 20/2025

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In this series, you can find financial markets posts with the highest number of interactions from my X platform feed over the most recent week. I am aware that not everybody uses X regularly, so I thought it could provide some value to your analysis, and investment process. These posts are also surrounded by commentary and explanations of complicated topics.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 rose 5% and 7%, posting its 2nd-best week since November 2023. Over the last 6 weeks, the index has surged +17% , marking the largest 6-week gain since 2020. At the same time, the Nasdaq 100 has jumped +23%, also the biggest gain since 2020. This was all fueled by trade optimism and a sharp reversal in US economic growth expectations.

Overall, stocks went from oversold to overbought in just a month.

Meanwhile, gold saw a notable pullback while US Treasury yields continued to rise.

1) Weekly performance. In the first post attached, you can see last week’s performance of the major US indexes, the VIX volatility index, 10-year Treasury yield, the US Dollar, gold, silver, oil and Bitcoin.

- S&P 500 jumped 5.2%
- Nasdaq index spiked 7.1%
- Dow Jones rose 3.4%
- Russell 2000 (small caps) soared 4.5%
- US 10-year Treasury yield increased 6 bps
- VIX fell 3%
- US Dollar index rose 0.8%
- WTI Crude Oil increased 2.2%
- Silver declined 1.6%
- Gold fell 4.4%

- Bitcoin fell 0.8%

For the trading week ending May 23, key events are:

- US S&P Global Manufacturing and Services PMI for May on Thursday

- US Existing Home Sales for April on Thursday

- US New Home Sales for April on Friday

- Fed Chair Powell Speech on Sunday

- At least 14 Fed speakers

Pretty muted week in terms of economic data.

2) Institutional investors’ positioning remains defensive. However, they conducted a significant short-covering.

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