Closing Stock Market SummaryA stock market that moved higher in broad-based fashion at the start of today's trading ended the day mixed in disappointing fashion. The main disappointment was the recognition that the early rally effort could not be sustained, especially coming off another week of losses last week.
Some favorable price action in the mega-cap stocks, some optimism over reports that China is loosening COVID restrictions in its largest cities, and some relief from tariff and regulatory matters fueled the initial buying interest.
Solar stocks and Chinese ADRs saw some of the biggest moves. The former were helped by a Wall Street Journal report that said the Biden Administration isn't going to institute any new tariffs on solar imports for two years. The latter got a boost from separate reports suggesting Chinese regulators are ending their probe of Didi (DIDI 2.31, +0.46, +24.9%).
The biggest influences on the major indices, though, were the biggest stocks. The Vanguard Mega-Cap Growth ETF (MGK) gained as much as 2.1%, driven by sizable gains in Tesla (TSLA 714.84, +11.29, +1.6%), which reacted favorably to Elon Musk clarifying that total headcount will increase this year even though salaried staff is apt to remain relatively flat, Amazon.com (AMZN 124.79, +2.44, +2.0%), which split 20-for-1, and Apple (AAPL 146.14, +0.76, +0.5%), which climbed ahead of today's Worldwide Developers Conference.
Those stocks and others, however, could not maintain their opening momentum. They fell prone to renewed selling interest, finishing well off session highs, as interest rates rose and natural gas futures soared. The Vanguard Mega-Cap Growth ETF ended the day up 0.5%.
Briefly, the 10-yr note yield moved back above 3.00%, ending its session up eight basis points at 3.04%, and natural gas futures settled the session up $0.84, or 9.8%, at $9.34/mmbtu.
WTI crude futures didn't go the way of natural gas futures. They tried early, briefly topping $120.00/bbl on a report that Saudi Arabia is raising oil prices for Asian buyers because of strong demand, but they eventually rolled over and settled the day down $1.01, or 0.8%, at $118.21/bbl.
That move contributed to the underperformance of the S&P 500 energy sector (-0.1%), which vacillated between positive and negative territory. Other underperformers of note included the real estate (-0.3%), health care (unch), information technology (+0.04%), and consumer staples (+0.05%) sectors.
In general, there wasn't much conviction on either the buy side or the sell side. That showed up in a relatively mixed advance-decline line for the NYSE and Nasdaq, and a sector scoreboard that featured only one sector with a gain of at least 1.0%. That was the consumer discretionary sector (+1.03%), which enjoyed the hefty support of Tesla and Amazon.com. The communication services (+0.98%) and materials (+0.97%) sectors finished just shy of 1.0% gains.
There was no economic data of note out of the U.S. today.
Looking ahead, market participants will receive the April Trade Balance Report (8:30 a.m. ET) and the April Consumer Credit Report (3:00 p.m. ET) on Tuesday.
- Dow Jones Industrial Average: -9.4% YTD
- S&P 400: -10.9% YTD
- S&P 500: -13.5% YTD
- Russell 2000: -16.0% YTD
- Nasdaq Composite: -22.9% YTD