Closing Stock Market Summary
The stock market traded higher through most of the session today following rebound action in the major indices last week. There was some volatility, however, in the afternoon trade that coincided with the Treasury Department releasing its quarterly borrowing estimates.
Stocks quickly moved lower at 3:00 ET after the Treasury announced that borrowing in Q2 is expected to reach $243 billion, which is $41 billion higher than estimated at the end of Q4. The downside action was short-lived and the major indices spent the last hour of trading climbing off their lows.
Many stocks finished the session with gains, leading the equal-weighted S&P 500 to close with a 0.7% gain. Losses in some mega cap names like Meta Platforms (META 432.62, -10.67, -2.4%), Alphabet (GOOG 167.90, -5.79, -3.3%), and Microsoft (MSFT 402.25, -4.07, -1.0%) limited upside moves for the major indices.
Another limiting factor today was technical resistance in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite as the indices approached their respective 50-day moving averages (5,125 for the S&P 500 and 16,053 for the Nasdaq Composite).
Gains in Tesla (TSLA 194.05, +25.76, +15.3%) after it won temporary approval in China for its self-driving service, according to The Wall Street Journal, and in Apple (AAPL 432.62, -10.67, -2.4%), which was upgrade to Outperform from Market Perform at Bernstein, acted as offsetting support to broader market.
Only two of the S&P 500 sectors closed with losses -- communication services (-2.1%) and financials (-0.2%) -- while the consumer discretionary sector (+2.0%) logged the biggest gain.
It is a busy week of potentially market-moving events. More than 170 S&P 500 companies will be reporting their March quarter results, there is an FOMC decision and press conference on Wednesday, along with slate of economic releases. The April ISM Manufacturing Index will be released on Wednesday and the April Employment Report will be released on Friday.
- S&P 500:+7.3% YTD
- Nasdaq Composite: +6.5% YTD
- S&P Midcap 400: +4.7% YTD
- Dow Jones Industrial Average: +1.9% YTD
- Russell 2000: -0.6% YTD
Tuesday's economic calendar features:
- 8:30 ET: Q1 Employment Cost Index (consensus 1.0%; prior 0.9%)
- 9:00 ET: February FHFA Housing Price Index (prior -0.1%) and February S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index (consensus 6.7%; prior 6.6%)
- 9:45 ET: April Chicago PMI (consensus 44.5; prior 41.4)
- 10:00 ET: April Consumer Confidence (consensus 104.0; prior 104.7