Trading results for 21-25 April 2025

Slowly but surely, investment optimism is gaining the upper hand, and the market is gradually recovering its lost ground. The past week finally showed us all that it is too early to despair and that things are not as bad as they might have seemed. Although at the beginning of the period many investors might have thought that everything was lost and it was time to urgently "jump off the sinking ship", such sentiments fortunately were only observed on Monday. Afterwards the situation began to improve, and optimism slowly returned to the battlefield of the stock market.

The return of positivity was largely aided by the quarterly reporting season, which was gaining momentum and being published in increasing volumes. However, it cannot be said that growth was reckless and that investors were buying up everything in their path. Nothing of the sort! Purchases were cautious and initially highly selective. Yet as quotations rose, the number of willing buyers increased, and the range of market participants' interests rapidly expanded.

In the end we witnessed one of the brightest weeks of the past year and a half – practically since November 2023. All leading U.S. indexes closed the week in confident positive territory and the NASDAQ Composite index showed truly stellar growth – nearly 7% (+6.79%)!!! Its older counterparts, the Dow Jones (DJIA-30) and S&P 500 indexes, posted more modest results: +2.48% and +4.59% respectively, but these figures also look quite impressive.

It is worth noting that at the sectoral level the picture was also quite positive. Only one sector out of eleven ended the week with a negative result. This loser was the Consumer Defensive sector, where companies producing essential goods lost an average of 0.8%. But this is quite understandable: in the previous month this sector was one of the main beneficiaries amid the market decline, as investors massively reallocated from leading technology stocks into defensive food industry shares.

Now the reverse process has begun, and market participants have become more tolerant of risk. Therefore, the greatest demand among investors was for the shares of the powerhouse sectors: technology companies, which on average rose by 7.73% over the week, cyclical companies, which added an average of 7.07%, and communication services companies, whose shares appreciated by 5.56%.

The indexes of the ITS family did not lag behind their American counterparts. Moreover, both the ITS World index (ITSW) of global companies and the ITS Shariah index (ITSS) of Islamic securities posted higher growth over the past week than the Dow Jones index and the main benchmark of the U.S. stock market, the S&P 500, falling behind only the high-tech NASDAQ index. A 5% weekly growth (the ITSW index rose by 4.88% and the ITSS index by 5.57%) can itself be considered a kind of mark of quality.

Speaking of individual companies, many tech giants showed stable demand for their shares and posted gains of 10-15% over the past week, with some even achieving 20%. However, it is worth highlighting two leaders – Tesla (TSLA) and Alphabet (GOOGL), who were the first among the Magnificent Seven (MAG7) to publish their quarterly reports. Interestingly, their results were essentially opposite: Tesla's report had a clearly negative tone, while Google's report was extremely positive, but...

The share prices of both companies went up. Tesla's shares, being more speculative, rose rapidly, while Google's shares grew more cautiously. Although the latter's result was perhaps less impressive (+6.8% for GOOGL compared to +18.08% for TSLA), the very fact that a leading tech company engaged in cloud technology and closely connected to AI development was doing well had an extremely positive impact on the overall market.

It is also worth noting that growth was observed not only in the U.S. market. Asia, particularly China, looked good as well. Although growth there may not have been as vivid as in the U.S., leading tech companies such as Baidu (BIDU) and Alibaba (BABA) confidently achieved around +10% over the past week and made a significant contribution to the ITSW index.

Overall, it can be stated for now that the stock market situation has become noticeably more positive. And this is despite the still high level of uncertainty surrounding the possible introduction of new tariffs by President Trump. Nevertheless, this uncertainty has become less frightening to investors, and many have taken the opportunity to enter the market at more attractive prices.