Where the session stands: breadth, sectors, and what moved.
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This is the CAMS Midday Market Check for Friday, July 31.
Heading into the early afternoon, the large-cap indexes are holding modest gains on the last trading day of July. The S&P 500 is up about a third of a percent, the Nasdaq 100 is up a similar amount, and the Dow is doing a little better, up about four tenths. The soft spot is small caps: the Russell 2000 is down about two thirds of a percent, so today's strength is concentrated at the top of the market rather than spread across it.
Inside the Dow, breadth leans positive but not overwhelmingly so, with sixteen advancers against thirteen decliners. What makes that number interesting is what it's absorbing. Apple is down close to ten percent on the session, one of the heaviest weights in the market taking a hard hit, and the index is still green. Microsoft, up almost three percent, along with Chevron and Cisco, is doing the counterbalancing.
The sector picture is genuinely split, five groups up and six down. Consumer discretionary is the clear leader, up more than three percent, with communications and industrials behind it. On the other side, materials is down more than two percent, while technology and health care are modestly lower. That is a tape rotating toward the consumer side while parts of tech digest a big single-stock decline.
The VIX sits just under seventeen, slightly lower on the day, a calm reading given the movement under the surface. The economic calendar is clear for the rest of the session.
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