Closing Stock Market Summary
Today's session started with a positive bias under the surface despite a mixed performance at the index level. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq were in negative territory early on, albeit with somewhat modest losses. That weakness had them both below their 50-day moving averages. At the same time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Russell 2000 were trading up and market breadth was positive.
The early underperformance seen in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq was largely driven by softness in the mega cap space and a big decline in Oracle (ORCL 109.61, -17.10, -13.5%) following its earnings report and relatively disappointing guidance.
A mid-day push higher saw the S&P 500 briefly climb past its 50-day moving average, but it was unable to maintain that posture, which invited increased selling activity in the afternoon trade. The major indices spent most of the afternoon in a steady decline. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished with a fractional loss while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite closed near their worst levels of the day.
Losses were broad based, but mega caps had an outsized influence on index performance. The Vanguard Mega Cap Growth ETF (MGK) fell 1.2%; meanwhile, the market-cap weighted S&P 500 declined 0.6% versus a more modest 0.1% decline in the Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF (RSP).
Apple (AAPL 176.30, -3.06, -1.7%) was weak in front of its closely-watched product event and pulled back following a slate of announcements that featured the introduction of the iPhone 15.
Rising oil prices ($89.95/bbl, +1.66, +1.9%), which hit their highest level since last November, were another overhang for the market. That move benefited the S&P 500 energy sector (+2.3%), which closed at the top of the leaderboard by a wide margin.
The heavily-weighted information technology sector (-1.8%) logged the biggest decline.
Treasuries settled little changed from yesterday ahead of the August Consumer Price Index at 8:30 a.m. ET on Wednesday. The 2-yr note yield rose one basis points to 5.00% and the 10-yr note yield fell two basis points to 4.26%.
Today's economic data was limited to the August NFIB Small Business Optimism index, which declined to 91.3 from 91.9.
Nasdaq Composite: +31.6% YTD
S&P 500: +16.2% YTD
S&P Midcap 400: +6.1% YTD
Russell 2000: +5.3% YTD
Dow Jones Industrial Average: +4.5% YTD
Aside from CPI, other economic releases tomorrow include:
Weekly MBA Mortgage Applications Index at 7:00 a.m. ET
Weekly EIA Crude Oil Inventories at 10:30 a.m. ET
August Treasury budget at 2:00 p.m. ET