New signs of a broader rally: Wednesday's market takeaways

Presidential politics may have sway over the performance of certain stocks, the markets possibly reacting to comments about Meta (META) and Rumble (RUM) from former President Donald Trump.

The commodity market is currently on a run, with prices of Gold (GC=F), Silver (SI=F), and Cocoa (CC=F) trading higher. Silver's relationship to gold may also serve as a useful economic indicator: historically, when silver outperforms gold it signals stagflation.

Beyond the tech sector, the market recorded new record highs among names like Materials (XLB), possibly pointing to a broader market rally.

Yahoo Finance Market Report Josh Schafer joins the Live show for break down the top market takeaways for Wednesday, March 13

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Editor's note: This article was written by Nicholas Jacobino

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: The top takeaways from today's trading day, let's bring in Yahoo Finance's Josh Schafer. And Josh, the last story brings to mind the idea that presidential politics sometimes does affect the markets and affects individual companies.

JOSH SCHAFER: Definitely, yeah.

JULIE HYMAN: And we're getting closer to the presidential election. So maybe we're going to see more of this.

JOSH SCHAFER: And this isn't the first time we've seen even this week, right? Julie, think back to Monday, we saw a pretty big drawdown in Meta. Now I don't know if I would give the full 5% move that we saw at one point on Monday specifically to former President Donald Trump talking badly about Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook and Meta, but it did correspond with the move. So we were looking at it in that realm.

And then you've seen some of the other stocks that former President Trump has talked about repeatedly or has been linked to, I should say, repeatedly. NDWAC and Rumble, those stocks have been rallying to start this year. And it's just curious to think about as we get into this election cycle. And remember, as these presidents are talking about different pushes and they talk about companies, investors are going to be listening to that trade.

And it's just something to be aware of, I think, if you're an investor in certain companies that we know they're going to be talking about. So that was one takeaway I had today, guys. But I want to move on to my second takeaway that's up on the screen right now.

Commodities are just ripping. Like we've been talking a lot about gold, and I know gold gets a lot of headlines when we see gold at a record high, but it's beyond gold, too.

JULIE HYMAN: Katy Kaminski was just talking about this. Cocoa was one of the ones that the--

JOSH SCHAFER: Cocoa chart's ridiculous. The cocoa chart is flat out ridiculous. I mean, Jared put it up next to Nvidia, and it looks like a similar climb. And it's been interesting you've seen silver popping. You've seen copper popping. You've seen stocks related to copper. You think of like a Freeport McMoRan, up 5% today. So you're seeing those stocks move as these commodities move.

And one thing I wanted to mention, guys--

JOSH LIPTON: Do they still call it Dr. Copper, by the way? Is that still--

JOSH SCHAFER: Dr. Copper?

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah. People still call that Dr. Copper.

JOSH SCHAFER: I like Dr. Copper.

JULIE HYMAN: Dr. Copper because it is an economic indicator. So traditionally, that's why it's been called Dr. Copper, like it's the doctor that tells you what's going to happen economically.

JOSH SCHAFER: If it keeps going higher, we can do Dr. Pepper and talk Dr. Copper.

JOSH LIPTON: Those are good charts. Now you're talking.

JOSH SCHAFER: You like that? That's your 4:00 PM marker.

JOSH LIPTON: That's your next story, Schafer.

JOSH SCHAFER: Yeah. One other thing, guys I wanted to point out with that, I've been interested in commodities, is just the relationship between silver and gold and if silver starts outperforming gold. I recently worked on a story on stagflation and the different signs we can see in terms of that.

And one thing Michelle Snyder had highlighted to me over at MarketGauge, she said back in the 70s and 80s when we had that big bout of stagflation, one of the key signs was started to see silver outperforming gold. We're looking at a short term chart there. This isn't a big trend. But overall, as we're talking about stagflation, it'll be interesting to see if that trend sort of continues.

JULIE HYMAN: Well, and I'm just looking at some of these commodities on the Y-Fi interactive, and it's interesting because the breakout has been quite recent. So here's silver, for example, year-to-date. And it just went positive for the year, call it in early March. So this move up has been relatively sudden. That's the same case goes for goal as well. So it's kind of interesting how that's been playing out that it's all of a sudden kind of roaring from nowhere.

There's corn, that one's not doing quite--

JOSH SCHAFER: Because everything's roaring, right, Julie?

JULIE HYMAN: Is it because everything is roaring? I'm looking still for cocoa. There's our cocoa. That one has been roaring. Year-to-date, up 65.

JOSH LIPTON: It's the Nvidia of commodities.

JULIE HYMAN: Right. We've got a lot of Nvidia's of things today, right? We got JPMorgan's--

JOSH LIPTON: The problem is we went a whole hour without mentioning Nvidia. I think-- I thought I had to bring it up.

JULIE HYMAN: We got to overdo it.

JOSH LIPTON: Yeah, yeah.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, exactly. And what's your last takeaway speaking of Nvidia?

JOSH SCHAFER: Should we do in Nvidia of sectors? Yeah, we can just call it that. We'll call it if something hits a record high, it's the Nvidia of x or y, right?

But it was interesting, Jared just highlighted this, if you take a look at XLB, that hit a record high for the first time in over two years today and adding that sort of to the string of record highs that we've been seeing, right? So when we take a look at the S&P 500 and go under the hood, you're seeing other sectors in-- we're talking about materials specifically right now-- hitting a record high, which is interesting to highlight.

And then you had financials again hitting a fresh record high again today. They just started hitting their record highs. That's been picking up. So I think you guys were just talking recently about the broadening out. Are we seeing it, or are we not seeing it? One thing a lot of folks highlight is just look at the different sectors. It's not just tech.

I was looking at sector year-to-date performance a little bit ago. Tech is not one, and it's not two. It's communication services, financials, and then tech.

JULIE HYMAN: I mean, communication services is tech.

JOSH SCHAFER: Sure.

JULIE HYMAN: I've got this up on the interactive, too, if we want to take a look at it. The XLC is the best performer. Here's the year-to-date performance. So the only lagging one is real Estate and it's interesting that interest rate sensitives are in the lagging position, real estate and utilities. But the others are doing great.

JOSH SCHAFER: Flip it to the one month.

JULIE HYMAN: Flip it to the one month he says. OK.

JOSH SCHAFER: When we go to the one month, I think it's just interesting to see the flip we had there, right? So the screen we were looking at before year-to-date, you had communication services and tech sort of up high. But then when you look at the one month now, here's where you really see that rotation, right?

JULIE HYMAN: Materials and energy.

JOSH SCHAFER: Materials and energy has kind of been the trade for a month now.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah. And here's tech just kind of in the middle there, right? That is not up as much over the past month.

JOSH SCHAFER: So maybe it's not all just Nvidia or maybe it is.

JULIE HYMAN: Maybe it's not.

JOSH SCHAFER: Maybe it is.

JOSH LIPTON: Tomorrow's story. Joshua, thank you.