Closing Stock Market SummaryIt was a grind today for the stock market, but that doesn't mean it was a bad session. On the contrary, it was a good day for the stock market, which saw very little challenge from sellers outside of some individual stocks and the S&P 500 hit a new 52-week high.
Leadership from select mega-cap stocks, but principally Apple (AAPL 193.99, +3.30, +1.7%), Tesla (TSLA 290.38, +9.00, +3.20), and NVIDIA (NVDA 464.61, +9.92, +2.2%), made the difference for the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P 500. Those indices, though, still found themselves looking up at the Russell 2000 (+1.2%), which outperformed on the back of strength in its financial and semiconductor components.
There weren't any meaningful news drivers to account for today's buying interest. Rather, it was more of the same buying on weakness and forging ahead on the hopeful notion that the U.S. economy will avoid a hard landing, that the Fed is close to done raising interest rates, and that earnings growth will return in the second half of the year.
Notably, the financial sector (+1.0%) was a pocket of relative strength in front of earnings reports from Bank of America (BAC 29.40, +0.29, +1.0%), Morgan Stanley (MS 86.37, +0.59, +0.7%), and Charles Schwab (SCHW 58.64, +0.12, +0.2%) before Tuesday's open. The SPDR S&P Bank ETF (KBE) gained 1.7% and the SPDR S&P Regional Banking ETF (KRE) gained 1.7%.
Those performances were a far cry from the hit that AT&T (T 13.53, -0.97, -6.7%) and Verizon (VZ 31.46, -2.55, -7.5%) took amid concerns about potential liabilities and financial risk related to the telecom industry's historical use of lead sheathed cables. Those concerns precipitated a downgrade of AT&T to Neutral from Buy at Citigroup and triggered a wave of retail and institutional selling in both stocks. AT&T traded nearly four times its average volume while Verizon traded more than four times its average volume.
The weakness in those names, and a loss in Alphabet (GOOG 125.06, -0.64, -0.5%), was responsible for the underperformance of the communication services sector (-0.7%).
Led by Apple and its semiconductor components, the information technology sector (+1.3%), which is the market's most heavily-weighted sector, sat atop today's leaderboard. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index jumped 2.3%, extending its gains in the afternoon when NVIDIA emerged from negative territory. Before the open, Citigroup raised its price target on NVIDIA to $520 from $420.
Microsoft (MSFT 345.73, +0.49, +0.1%) eked out a gain after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the FTC's appeal to uphold the block on Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard (ATVI 93.21, +3.14, +3.5%). It was also reported by Bloomberg today that the UK court has put a hold on the UK's veto vote of Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard. In any case, the small gain in MSFT was another support factor for the information technology sector.
Overall, there wasn't a lot buying support in the utilities (-1.2%), real estate (-0.9%), health care (-0.4%), or consumer staples (-0.3%) sectors, which underperformed in a lightly-traded session that nonetheless had more of a risk-on look to it than not despite word that China's Q2 GDP was weaker than expected and that Russia suspended its participation in the Black Sea grain agreement.
Advancers outpaced decliners by a roughly 4-to-3 margin at the NYSE and a roughly 7-to-4 margin at the Nasdaq. The Invesco S&P 500 Equal-Weight ETF (RSP) rose 0.2%; however, the Vanguard Mega-Cap Growth ETF (MGK) gained 0.6%.
- Nasdaq Composite: +36.1% YTD
- S&P 500: +17.8% YTD
- Russell 2000: +10.8% YTD
- S&P Midcap 400: +10.7% YTD
- Dow Jones Industrial Average: +4.3% YTD
Reviewing today's economic data:
- The July Empire State Manufacturing Survey checked in at a better-than-expected 1.1 (consensus -8.8), although that was a deceleration from the prior month's reading of 6.6.
Looking ahead to Tuesday, market participants will receive the following economic data:
- 8:30 a.m. ET: June Retail Sales
- 9:15 a.m. ET: June Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization
- 10:00 a.m. ET: May Business Inventories; July NAHB Housing Market Index
- 4:00 p.m. ET: May Net Long-Term TIC Flows