Want to know the recipe for the most fashionable craft cocktail on Wall Street today? I know you do, so let me lay it on you in a minute. But first, be sure you’re on board with the Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ), says Jim Woods, editor of Successful Investing.
Bullish 2024 Market Cocktail: One-part stable economic growth, one-part falling inflation, one-part impending interest rate cuts, and one-part AI (Artificial Intelligence) promise. Mix ingredients in a “FOMO” (Fear Of Missing Out) shaker, pour in a martini glass, then add a little Bitcoin-flavored sugar to the rim to make it taste even sweeter.
Of course, you can’t order this cocktail in any of the swank Lower Manhattan bars of the sort I used to frequent when I worked at the World Trade Center. But what you can do is make this cocktail work for you in your portfolio, as the gains we’ve seen in stocks—particularly tech stocks tied to the AI wave—have vaulted the major indices to new, all-time highs.
Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ)
On March 20, all three major domestic indices—Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500, and Nasdaq Composite—broke out to close at record high levels. The big driver of that buying was, of course, the Federal Reserve, as it had just concluded its March Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting.
The Fed left rates unchanged, as we all expected, and the practical impact of the so-called “dot plot” (where Fed members think interest rates will be by year-end), along with reassurances by Chairman Jerome Powell that the FOMC is done hiking and will cut as soon as the data allows, is that markets continue to expect a June rate cut.
While the Fed did confirm that it expects there to be two-to-three rate cuts by year-end barring a growth rollover, we’re still going to exit 2024 with the federal funds rate over 4.5%. So far, this market has tolerated the disappointment of not getting what it thought it would (remember, markets started the year expecting five-to-six rate cuts, with the first cut at the March meeting), and that’s largely because of two reasons.
First, AI enthusiasm continues to rage and that’s helping keep the bull market running. Second (and this is more fundamentally important), it’s because growth has held up.
Of course, given the AI optimism that I wrote about earlier as a big driver of markets, it should come as no surprise that we’ve seen big recent gains in the QQQ. This is a fund that holds the biggest Nasdaq 100 stocks, including AI darlings Nvidia Corp. (NVDA), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), Meta Platforms Inc. (META) and Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL).
If you don’t own QQQ, or if you don’t own these stocks individually, then you are not participating in the mega-cap move in tech. And if you are not participating in tech, then you are not investing where the growth has been, and where the growth is likely to be headed in the months and years to come.
Recommended Action: Buy QQQ.
