Closing Stock Market Summary
It was a lackluster start to the week for stocks. The S&P 500 only moved about 22 points between its intraday high and low, ultimately settling with a 0.1% decline. The muted action was related to a wait-and-see mentality in front of busy week due to the understanding that stocks are trading near all-time highs.
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite briefly traded above their prior closing levels, but quickly pulled back to session lows, following the price action in mega cap stocks. Meta Platforms (META 498.19, -4.11% -0.8%), Amazon.com (AMZN 177.58, -0.64, -0.4%), and Microsoft (MSFT 414.92, -0.58, -0.1%), for example, had all been trading higher at their best levels of the session, but rolled over and settled lower.
Some other mega cap stocks traded down through the whole session, also having an outsized impact on index performance. Apple (AAPL 175.10, -4.56, -2.5%) shares declined on news that the EU is fining it more than EUR1.8 billion for "abusing its dominant position on the market for the distribution of music streaming apps to iPhone and iPad users (‘iOS users') through its App Store."
A sharp decline in Tesla (TSLA 188.14, -14.50, -7.2%) was related to a Bloomberg report that shipments from its China factory decline 19% year-over-year.
Still, the broader market held up okay despite the aforementioned losses in heavily-weighted constituents. The Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF (RSP) eked out a 0.2% gain.
Market participants were hesitant on either side of the tape in front of earnings results from retailers like Target (TGT 150.49, -4.80, -3.1%) and Costco (COST 759.18, +9.74, +1.3%), and earnings from Broadcom (AVGO 1402.26, +3.09, +0.2%) this week. The economic calendar is headlined by the February ISM Non-Manufacturing Index on Tuesday and February Jobs Report on Friday.
Also, Fed Chair Powell will deliver his semiannual monetary policy testimony before Congress on Wednesday and Thursday, but this is not expected to produce any surprises. Mr. Powell is largely expected to reiterate the Fed's view that there is no rush to cut rates.
Atlanta Fed President Bostic (FOMC voter) echoed this narrative in a speech today, saying that inflation has decelerated over the past year, but that price pressures are still widespread in his view.
The communication services sector (-1.5%) had a weak showing, weighed down by losses in Alphabet (GOOG 134.20, -3.88, -2.8%) and Meta Platforms.
It was the worst performing S&P 500 sector, followed by the consumer discretionary sector (-1.3%), which felt the pinch of the sharp decline in Tesla. Weakness in shares of Amazon.com also contributed to the sector's performance. These two sectors comprise nearly 20% of the index.
The energy sector was the only other sector that declined more than 1.0% today, sliding 1.1% as WTI crude oil futures fell 1.3% to $78.70/bbl.
There was no US economic data of note today.
Nasdaq Composite: +8.0% YTD
S&P 500: +7.6% YTD
Dow Jones Industrial Average: +3.5% YTD
S&P Midcap 400: +5.4% YTD
Russell 2000: +2.3% YTD
Looking ahead, Tuesday's economic calendar features:
9:45 ET: Final February S&P Global U.S. Services PMI (prior 52.5)
10:00 ET: January Factory Orders (consensus -2.5%; prior 0.2%) and February ISM Non-Manufacturing Index (consensus 52.7%; prior 53.4%)