August shows signs of strong U.S. markets

Yahoo Finance’s On The Move panel weigh in on the latest stories making headlines.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: And, Jared, market historian and aficionado that you are, it is the first trading day of August. August does not tend to be a good month for the markets. But there's an exception, right?

JARED BLIKRE: That is correct. In an election year, August ends up being one of the best months, and especially for the Russell 2000 and for the NASDAQ, which is an interesting combination. What we do tend to see in August and September-- and sometimes October-- is volatility spike.

So if we take a look at the VIX, it's been relatively subdued-- trading around 25-- over the last week or so. If it pops up to 30 or even 40, probably be concurrent with a downturn in the market, not necessarily a big one, but we have seen a lot of these volatility spikes since the COVID outbreak. And it's important to keep in mind that we did have the biggest VIX spike in history this year, and we tend to have these not in isolation. So we could have a downturn in a month, but even if we end up closing green, still watch out for that volatility.

JULIE HYMAN: That feels like several years ago now, doesn't it, Jared? It's amazing it was just earlier this year.

Jared, we've seen IPOs starting to perk up once again, and you have an upcoming webinar on that topic on Wednesday. Tell us about it.

JARED BLIKRE: Yeah, very excited. This is going to be our second Yahoo Finance Premium webinar. And anybody can sign up at our website or just go to my Twitter handle, @SPYJared. I'll be posting a link shortly.

I'm going to be talking with Kathy Donnelly, who co-authored one of the definitive books on how to trade IPOs and super growth stocks. So anybody who's beginning to trade or is just trying to learn a little bit more or even advanced, I think there's going to be a lot. She's trained in the IBD CANSLIM method and just a great overall market technician. So looking forward to that this Wednesday, 2:00 PM, and you can sign up at our website.

JULIE HYMAN: Awesome. And I know there are definitely a lot of new market entrants this year thus far who could find that to be really useful information. Thank you, Jared. Thank you, Dan Howley. Thank you, Adam Shapiro, as always.