To The Moon

What the experts say |The $S&P 500(.SPX)$ closed at new highs, signaling strong market momentum! Welcome to reading Greg Boland’s maket commentary on BATMMAAN stocks, outshine sectors and focus Q2 reporting season, try to seize opportunities before the market cools.

Keyinsights：

1. "S&P 500 Soars to Record Highs: What's Driving the Bullish Outlook in 2025?"

2. "The $4 Trillion Club: NVIDIA's Rise and the Battle for Market Cap Supremacy"

3. "US Reporting Season Begins: Banks in Focus Amid Volatile Q2"

4. "ETFs in Focus: Bitcoin ETFs Outshine Traditional Index Funds"

5. "Market Sentiment Indicators: Is the VIX Signaling Stability or Complacency?"

US Stock Market

The US stock market was closed last Friday to observe the 4th of July Independence Day holiday. That said the $S&P 500(.SPX)$ last Thursday at a record closing high of 6279 having achieved an intraday high of 6284 earlier in the session.

The S&P 500 is considered the most important and widely followed benchmark of the US stock market, providing broad market representation by including the largest publicly traded companies in the US. It covers about 80% of total US equity market capitalisation, making it highly representative of the overall US economy and market performance.

As we move through 2025, some large banks’ analysts are optimistic, projecting the index to reach 6100 to 6500 by year-end. These bullish forecasts are underpinned by expectations of lower interest rates, easing inflation, pro-business policies from the Trump administration, and continued momentum in AI. Despite risks like rising bond yields and trade tensions, analysts believe the economic backdrop remains strong enough to support further gains. Their projections underscore the S&P 500’s role not just as a market barometer, but as a powerful force shaping investment decisions in real time.

The index is weighted by market capitalisation, meaning larger companies (e.g. $Apple(AAPL)$ , $Microsoft(MSFT)$ , $NVIDIA(NVDA)$) have a bigger influence on its movement and this reflects how money is actually allocated in the real market, unlike price-weighted indices like the $Dow Jones(.DJI)$ . The $S&P 500(.SPX)$ provides industry and sector diversity as it spans all major sectors, including tech, healthcare, financials, energy, consumer goods, and industrials. By comparison the $NASDAQ 100(NDX)$ is more tech-focused.

Professional investors (asset managers, hedge funds, pension funds) and retail investors benchmark their performance against the S&P 500. Many ETFs (e.g. $SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust(SPY)$ and $Vanguard S&P 500 ETF(VOO)$ ) and mutual funds track the index, channelling trillions of dollars in passive investments. The index often serves as a proxy for the US economy’s health, as it includes companies that generate significant domestic and global revenues. Movements in the S&P 500 are closely tied to GDP growth, earnings expectations, and monetary policy.

Financial media heavily report on $S&P 500(.SPX)$ daily changes, making it a household metric. 

It’s often used as a shorthand for “the market" in headlines like “Market rises 2% today”, referring to the $S&P 500(.SPX)$ .

What stocks are in the index is decided by the S&P Dow Jones committee that evaluate candidate stocks on a quarterly rebalancing cycle to ensure that the index accurately reflects the largest US publicly traded companies by market cap, liquidity, profitability, and listing standards. Interim adjustments may also occur if a company goes bankrupt, delists or is subject to M&A activity.

At rebalancing, stocks that are added typically see a short-term price rise due to buying by passive index funds whilst those that are removed will be sold by passive funds. Traders often speculate on what might be added. At the March rebalancing, $DoorDash, Inc.(DASH)$ , $TKO Group Holdings(TKO)$ , $Williams-Sonoma(WSM)$ and $EXPAND ENERGY CORPORATION(EXE)$ were added while $BorgWarner(BWA)$ , $Teleflex(TFX)$ , $Celanese(CE)$ and $FMC Corp(FMC)$ were removed. At the June rebalancing, there was no change after the inclusion of Coinbase in May, but traders bought $Robinhood(HOOD)$ and $AppLovin Corporation(APP)$ prior to the announcement on the expectation of their inclusion. They closed at an approximately 2% and 8% loss respectively on June 9 after missing the inclusion in the index expectations.

However late last week $Datadog(DDOG)$ was granted admission to the S&P 500 as of the 9th of July and becomes the fifth company to do so in 2025.  Datadog is a leading cloud monitoring and security platform.  Since its IPO in 2019 Datadog has increased by 315% compared to 109% for the benchmark that it joins.  This change in the index came after Juniper Networks was acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, opening the door for Datadog’s addition.  The stock jumped 15% on the index news and passive index funds will need to buy to remain index weighted.

The $S&P 500(.SPX)$ matters because it’s the most accurate, liquid, diversified, and trusted gauge of US equity performance. $Nike(NKE)$ , $First Solar(FSLR)$

In the past five days the top performers in the index have been Nike surged more than 22% surged after its latest earnings report, signalling that its turnaround is finally underway.  First Solar up 19% and Hewlett Packard Enterprise gained 16% for the week after the US Department of Justice approved the Jupiter Networks acquisition.

$Oracle(ORCL)$ also had a good week up 11.5% for the week and 42% YTD after Oracle disclosed that it had landed a cloud services deal it expects will be worth more than $30 billion annually starting in 2028.  OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, will rent additional cloud-computing capacity from Oracle totalling about 4.5 gigawatts of data center power.

The indexes top performer YTD remains to be Palantir up 78% with NRG Energy up 76% and Seagate Technology up 73%. $Palantir Technologies Inc.(PLTR)$ $Ngen Technologies Holdings Corp.(NGRP)$ $Seagate Technology PLC(STX)$

US Reporting Season

The US reporting season kicks off next week with the Banks leading.  It will be interesting to see how profitable Bank earnings have been during a very volatile Q2.  One suspects the Equity and FICC (Fixed Interest, Currencies and Commodities) arms of the Banks would have done really well.

The Trillion-dollar club – BATMMAAN stocks remain a mixed bag YTD

Over the past two weeks $NVIDIA(NVDA)$ has knocked Microsoft out of top place in the capitalization rankings of the US market as it races towards becoming the 1st $4 trillion company.  NVIDIA is up more than 18% year to date as is $Microsoft(MSFT)$ and $Broadcom(AVGO)$ while $Meta Platforms, Inc.(META)$ still leads up nearly 23% YTD.  Alphabet, Apple and Tesla are still in negative territory YTD.

It took $Apple(AAPL)$ 38 years to achieve a $1T capitalisation, just over two more years to become a $2T and nearly 3 additional years to get to $3T.  By comparison $NVIDIA(NVDA)$ became a $1T company 24 years after its IPO, only 9 months to double to $2T and a mere 3.5 months to get to $3T.

ETFs Fund flow

The biggest Bitcoin ETFs by assets under management (AUM) are primarily the U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs approved in January 2024. $iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF(IBIT)$ $Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund(FBTC)$ $Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF(GBTC)$ , $ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF(ARKB)$ , $Bitcoin(BTC.USD.CC)$

Source: www.etfdb.com

Interestingly Blackrock reported last week that the IBIT ETF has generated &187.2 million in annual management fees which is more that its IVV iShares Core S&P 500 ETF

Other Indicators

Apart from the Indexes two key options related indicators of general market sentiment are the VIX and the Put/Call ratio.  The VIX, short for the CBOE Volatility Index, is often referred to as the “fear gauge” of the stock market. The $Cboe Volatility Index(VIX)$ measures the market's expectations of volatility over the next 30 days.  It’s based on the prices of S&P 500 options (specifically near-term puts and calls).  A higher VIX suggests traders expect more volatility; a lower VIX implies expectations of stability.  Think of it as a real-time sentiment indicator for how nervous or calm investors are.  The VIX closed at 16.38 last Thursday having peaked above 60 in early April as the S&P 500’s volatility diminishes as the market continues to recover from Liberation Day. 

The equity-only put/call ratio is a widely used sentiment indicator that measures investor behaviour in the stock market, specifically through options trading.  The equity only put/call ratio is calculated as the volume of equity put options divided by the volume of equity put options.  It excludes index options, focusing only on single-stock options (hence, “equity-only”).  This version is preferred by many traders because it reflects retail and speculative sentiment more directly than index-based ratios, which are often used by institutions for hedging.  Think of it as measuring how many people are betting on stocks to fall (puts) versus rise (calls). It’s a contrarian indicator, meaning it reflects extreme sentiment that often signals potential turning points in the market. 

On July 3, 2025, the equity-only put/call ratio was 0.48, its lowest level since mid-May.  This means that there are about 48 puts for every 100 calls on single-stock options.  This level is below the long-term average (~0.6), indicating a moderate-to-strong bullish sentiment among equity option traders.  This could be interpreted to signal a degree of complacency, increasing the likelihood of a short-term pullback.  If the ratio drops further (e.g. ~0.45), it could suggest overheated bullishness and potential market vulnerability.

Time will tell but keep an eye on these two options indictors as a gauge of bullish complacency or bearish fear.

About Greg Boland

Greg Boland is the Chief Strategy Officer for Tiger Brokers. His more than 35 years of specialist experience in capital markets include exchange management, investment advisory management, surveillance and risk and compliance, operations, and governance, and he is an authority in trading systems and methodologies (including online), exchange-traded equities and derivatives, equity options, index futures and options, and financial futures.