Closing Stock Market Summary
It was a strong day for the stock market. Many stocks finished higher as evidenced by the positive bias in market breadth. Advancers led decliners by a 7-to-2 margin at the NYSE and by a 2-to-1 margin at the Nasdaq. The Dow Jones Industrial Average saw a 0.3% gain, marking another record closing high, while the Russell 2000 jumped 1.8%, continuing its recent outperformance. With today's gain, the Russell 2000 is now positive on the year with a 0.9% gain.
Meanwhile, some mega cap stocks succumbed to profit-taking activity, weighing down the S&P 500 (-0.1%) and Nasdaq Composite (-0.3%).
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite had been trading higher earlier, up as much as 0.4% and 0.6%, respectively. The indices started to decline around mid-day,
though, as selling interest picked up in some overbought constituents.
Amazon.com (AMZN 172.34, -2.11, -1.2%) and Microsoft (MSFT 415.26, -5.29, -1.3%) were among the influential losers from the mega cap space, dropping more than 1.0% today. AMZN and MSFT are still up 13.4% and 10.4%, respectively, for the year.
Notably, some of the largest gainers to this point in the year from the mega cap space still finished higher today. Specifically, Meta Platforms (META 468.90, +0.79, +0.2%) and NVIDIA (NVDA 722.48, +1.15, +0.2%) closed in the green, bringing their 2024 gains to 32.5% and 46.3%, respectively.
Meta Platforms and NVIDIA fell from their session highs, however, as their mega cap peers extended early losses or rolled over from early gains. META had been up as much as 2.4% today and NVDA had been up as much as 3.4%.
Semiconductor stocks also rolled over from early strength, adding downside pressure to the major indices. The PHLX Semiconductor Index (SOX) had been up as much as 1.7% at its high, but closed with a 0.2% loss.
The rollover action seen today was related to the market's growing sense that things are due for a pullback. Still, the "rest" of the market, aside from semiconductor and mega cap stocks, continued to show nice resilience to selling efforts. The Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF (RSP) gained 0.7% today.
The rate-sensitive S&P 500 utilities sector saw the largest gain among the 11 sectors, responding to modest pullback in interest rates. The 2-yr note yield declined three basis points to 4.47% and the 10-yr note yield fell two basis points to 4.17%. This price action comes ahead of the January Consumer Price Index report at 8:30 ET.
The energy sector was another top performer, gaining 1.1%, due to a huge gain in Diamondback Energy (FANG 165.98, +14.24, +9.4%) following news that it plans to merge with Endeavor Energy Resources in a $26 billion cash-and-stock deal that is inclusive of Endeavor's debt.
On the flip side, the heavily-weighted information technology sector saw the largest decline (-0.8%) due to weakness in its mega cap constituents.
- Nasdaq Composite: +6.2% YTD
- S&P 500: +5.3% YTD
- Dow Jones Industrial Average: +2.9% YTD
- S&P Midcap 400: +1.9% YTD
- Russell 2000: +0.9% YTD
Reviewing today's economic data:
- The January Treasury Budget showed a deficit of $22.0 billion compared to a deficit of $38.8 bln in the same period a year ago. The deficit in January resulted from outlays ($499.3 billion) exceeding receipts ($477.3 billion). The Treasury Budget data is not seasonally adjusted so the January 2024 deficit cannot be compared to the December 2023 deficit of $129.4 billion.
- The key takeaway from the report is that the outlay for net interest in January exceeded the outlay for National Defense, reflecting the onerous impact of higher interest rates and the increased issuance to fund the government's chronic budget deficit.