Wall Street delivered a subdued performance last week. The S&P 500 has advanced about 0.3%, the Dow Jones has lost about 0.3% and the Nasdaq 100 has gained 1%. The alphabet-led tech rally and the Fed rate cut hopes boosted the growth investing segment.
Below, we highlight a few key events of the last week.
Tech giants just had an epic week, adding $420 billion in market cap to reach a combined $21 trillion valuation (as quoted on CNBC) despite NVIDIA’s dip. Alphabet surged about 11.6% last week, and Apple gained 3.1% after a U.S. court handed Google a limited antitrust penalty, and allowed it to maintain its search deal with Apple (read: Alphabet’s Stock Jumps as Antitrust Fears Ease: ETFs in Focus).
Although Alphabet was slapped with a $3.45 billion EU fine last week, investors paid more attention to the U.S. win. Meanwhile, Broadcom soared on a new $10 billion customer, while Tesla rose on Elon Musk’s proposed pay package (per the above-mentioned CNBC article). The gains cemented Big Tech’s ruling position.
The U.S. economy added 22,000 jobs in August 2025, lower than an upwardly revised 79,000 in July and market forecasts of 75,000, as quoted on tradingeconomics. The data reinforces the softness in the labor market.
Jobs data for June were revised down by 27,000, and the change for July was revised up by 6,000. With these revisions, the previously reported employment data for June and July combined got cut by 21,000. The unemployment rate at 4.3% changed slightly in August, per the government data.
Job growth was mainly noticed in sectors such as health care (+31,000) and social assistance (+16,000). Job losses were also pronounced in wholesale trade (12,000) and manufacturing (12,000).
The Fed will likely cut interest rates in September after Chair Jerome Powell hinted at a reduction in his highly anticipated Jackson Hole speech. There are 89% chances (at the time of writing) of a 25-bp rate cut in September, per the CME FedWatch Tool, while 11% chances shifted to the 50-bp rate cut. A softer labor market has probably led the market in this pricing pattern.
Against this backdrop, below we highlight a few winning leveraged exchange-traded funds (ETFs) of last week (data as per tradingview.com).
MicroSectors Gold Miners 3X Leveraged ETN GDXU – Up 26.5%
Direxion Daily Junior Gold Miners Index Bull 2X Shares JNUG – Up 20.1%
Gold prices have been steady lately, thanks to a higher safe-haven demand. As mining stocks often act as leveraged plays of the underlying metal, these leveraged gold mining ETFs surged higher.
