News and analysis

Banking stocks appear to be the main beneficiaries of the U.S. Nonfarm Payrolls for June. Being usually released on each first Friday of the month, it was announced a day early due to the U.S. long weekend ahead of celebrating the Independence Day on July 4.

The report showed 147,000 new jobs added in June versus the consensus expectation of 139,000 and 111,000 jobs a month ago (now revised to 144,000). The set of data also included average hourly earnings surplus of 0.2% only MoM against the expected growth of 0.4%. The annual pace came out at 3.7% against the previous 3.9% and 3.8 estimated by Wall Street analyst pool. This marks another important milestone for the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) on the path to possibly considering interest rate cuts sooner than later. Good for the economy, and even better for stocks, especially banks!

Given an unprecedented pressure on Fed's chair Jerome Powell and his colleagues from Donald Trump to reduce the burden of the national debt as quickly as possible, with interest rates on the national debt being tied in one way or another to the Fed's borrowing rates, of course, this Nonfarm payrolls release would be a good precedent that Powell's team could use to adequately justify the need to act, as hourly earnings trend may point to cooling inflation.

However, everyone can see something of their own in the release, and, therefore, the next steps of currency fluctuations look controversial. The best tactic in the currency market seems to be not to catch the next price movement today, but to try to ride the reverse pullback after the long weekend, relying on the 1.1700-1.1925 wider trading range for EURUSD, as an example. Since it is unlikely that the single European currency will climb beyond these limits on such mixed data.

This piece of news is excellent for Wall Street. Many stocks will continue to grow in the second half of the year, and I bet tech, retail and banking segments will do even better in the July-to-September quarter. That's why I still have a truckload of effective investment ideas as well as better expectations on my existing stock portfolio.

Another driver is the Big, Beatiful Bill’s essence. In the United States, on July 1, the Senate finally adopted a major bill with tax cuts for businesses, as well as an acceptable way to resolve the issue of the U.S. public debt ceiling for a decade ahead. The chances are also increasing for the Federal Reserve to reduce interest rates in September plus December. I would not rule out even such behind-the-scenes preliminary agreements that the increase the national debt by nearly 4 or 5 trillion Dollars by the bypartisan Congress could be a mandatory condition so that the Fed would, in principle, begin to reduce interest rates.

Anyway, the potential settlement of bond yields' curve after the bill's adoption may generate a more steady demand for U.S. public debt which, in turn, could lift bond prices. That's good for banks as each of the huge financial institutions is holding hundreds of billions Dollars in US bonds. And they have had a negative impact on banking balances. When the Fed's interest rates remain too high and the bond price curve does not rise, bonds cannot be sold with a profit before the expiration date, tying up a lot of available banking funds and reducing profit for banks.

It's worth noting that some giant banks like JPMorgan (JPM) have already hit multi-month historical highs, outpacing the rest. But every big bank is going to benefit eventually, and so the laggards like The Bank of America (BAC), which is also growing fast right now, are my best buys.

Based on this, I would buy Bank of America shares with targets of at least $57.5, given that they are currently trading just above $48, so there is room for at least 15% growth above that, which is quite a pleasure to have in the super-reliable banking sector. Other big banks are already in my portfolio for a long time, including JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Bank of America (BAC), Citigroup (C) and Wells Fargo (WFC) - all of them rose by 9.5% to 11% on bill hopes and additionally gained after the Federal Reserve’s annual "stress test" on June 30 provided optimistic signs, potentially leading to the banks increasing the excess capital they plan to distribute to shareholders via dividends or stock buybacks. Well, even in case of any possible future slowdown in business activity in the U.S., which the Fed will certainly not be able to prevent, I don’t mean a recession or anything like the Great Depression, simply a moderate decline in activity, many borrowers will once again run to banks for loans to keep their small and medium businesses safe and family budgets afloat. Good for the banking segment once again!

Litecoin (LTC) is up 5.1% this week, trading at $91.46 as it recovers from a recent decline to $82.46. The earlier drop was largely attributed to political tensions within the United States. With the broader crypto market stabilising and Bitcoin (BTC) gaining 2.5% to $109,980, just below the key $110,000 resistance, market sentiment is improving. A breakout in BTC above this level could drive the next leg of the rally, with targets at $118,000–$120,000.

In such a scenario, Litecoin is likely to follow, with a potential return to the $100.00 level. Investor optimism is also building around the possibility of a Litecoin ETF approval by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Bloomberg analysts currently assign a 94% probability to this outcome. A confirmed ETF approval and a clean break above $100.00 could set LTC on course toward the $120.00 mark.

Wall Street continues to rally above 6,235 points in terms of the S&P 500 broad market barometer. Our team of analysts is expecting the index to hit 6,500 or even 6,850 points within the rest of the year, and here is the time when drivers of optimistic sentiment are coming one after another to build up bullish momentum further. Markets are badly apolitical by nature, it's all about money and more money. But when political tensions are going to give birth to clearly economic reasons, even hardened cynics sometimes knee under this kind of pressure.

The spring of 2025 brought a perfect storm of tariff wars, nearly closing doors for cross-border trade and global recession prophecies, all accompanied by the Federal Reserve's stark rebellion against cutting interest rates. This caused many equity prices to fall by 20-25%, but yet provided excellent buying opportunities for those, who quickly realised all those worries were just yanking out mental chains. Congrats to all now that we are 30% above April's 4,800+ dips, and this summer grants us what we would call the opposite side of a perfect storm: a set of external reasons that together create an exceptionally favourable economic environment. Let's briefly name these advantages.

U.S. president Donald Trump eventually strikes a trade deal with Vietnam, imposing only a 20% tariff on all goods sent to the U.S., instead of threatening three times higher trade barriers since April, with a 40% tariff on any transhipping. In exchange, Vietnam granted the U.S. "total access" to its markets with zero tariffs on most American products. The deal was announced on Wednesday, July 2, to become the third big one after cherished agreements with the U.K. and China ahead of a July 9 likely “movable” deadline. We don't think anyone needs detailed explanations on how important this is for international supply chains, helping to maintain business profits and cooling inflation fears. It's especially good news for retailers and chipmakers, of course, but it will have a positive impact on everyone, including investors and non-investors, i.e. billions of ordinary consumers.

U.S. fiscal bill torture which previously created moderate market sweeping is over as well. The "Big Beautiful Bill", or simply BBB, passed the Senate successfully on July 1. Markets don't care that the BBB passed by a mere 51-50 vote, with the intervention of a decisive voice by vice president J.D. Vance, that a few of the less stable opposition senators insisted on reading the entire 940-page document aloud first, which took 16 hours, and then succeeded in getting it banned from being presented as a "Big, Beautiful Bill", considering this to be pressure on the reasons for the vote. Politics is the art of the possible, and the way the bill was pushed through is how it turned out. What's important to investors is that the bill supports dramatic taxes cuts for companies, some of them from 35% to 21%, which benefits not just the rich, but the entire economy, including the profits of large and small businesses, and the cash wallets of workers and consumers. Tax breaks for interest payments on auto loans up to $10,000 annually will support the auto industry, and tax credits for tips and especially overtime pays (up to $25 thousand and $12.5 thousand, respectively) will support many manufacturing and service segments.

As to increasing the U.S. debt ceiling by $5 trillion over 10 years, this can be considered a very moderate compromise that could hardly have been avoided, although many would like to freeze the national debt or start gradually paying it down, of course. But these are mostly dreams, which could be considered by the next Congress in 2027 or even some next U.S. president after 2030. No politician nowadays is ready to take such a decision. This decision from the summer of 2025 will also bring much more clarity to investors who did not understand what they could expect for U.S. Treasuries, and now demand for the U.S. debt would be stabilizing. More stability in the inflows of capital is more likely to allow the Federal Reserve to resume its previously stopped rate cut cycle.

Reducing inflation fears through the above-mentioned trade deals will help much. Reducing some excessive social benefits, according to the BBB - for those who are not trying to get a job - will be another additional factor to lower inflation expectations. The prospect of defeating highly inflated inflation expectations could break the back of the Federal Reserve hawks, and so Goldman Sachs already pulled forward its fresh forecast for the next Fed rate cut move from December to September. We will still have plenty of time and reasons during this summer to talk about the Fed's plans, and we will definitely do this, but now the only important thing is that the vector of expectations for borrowing costs is pointing downwards. And this is not the major driver, but yet another important factor contributing to what we could be characterised as "the opposite side of a perfect storm" to help the bulls in the U.S. stock market.

VeChain (VET) is down 3.0% this week, trading at $0.02060, underperforming the broader crypto market, where Bitcoin (BTC) remains largely flat around $107,500. In June, BTC declined by 12.5%, but VET fared worse, plunging 25.5% to a low of $0.01812.

The drop below the key $0.02000 support level was a concerning technical signal. However, a swift geopolitical de-escalation helped spark a rebound. VET initially recovered by 35.5% to $0.02680, with the maximum bounce reaching an impressive 307.0% to $0.08000 in previous cycles.

This historical recovery pattern suggests that the current rebound may still have room to run. Based on the average pace of past recoveries, a return to the $0.03000 level appears achievable in the near term, with the potential to climb further if broader market conditions improve.