Stocks Today: Are You Missing Out on Big Trades?
U.S. stock indexes built on Friday’s advances this Monday as stocks rallied today as investors bet the Federal Reserve would cut interest rates later this year after a report Friday showed the U.S. economy added fewer-than-expected jobs in April.
The benchmark S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq rose to three-week peaks on Monday after the jobs data showed the slowest pace of U.S. job growth in 18 months, reducing pressure on the Fed to raise rates for an extended period.
Stocks Today: Fed rate cut
Today, wagers on lower interest rates are priced in: traders this week are expecting a cut of 46 basis points by the end of 2024, according to LSEG’s rate probability app, with the first cut scheduled for September or November.
Stocks were higher generally today on the back of an earnings season that has been better than expected, and on increasing chances for easing US monetary policy that has helped to calm US stock indexes after the volatile April.
Top stocks: Tesla, Apple gain in trading
The Fed signalled last week that it is leaning toward rate cuts at some point, but said it would wait for more confidence in inflation reductions before pulling the trigger.
The Richmond Fed president Thomas Barkin and the New York Fed president John Williams are scheduled to speak later today, the first of several US central bank policymakers scheduled to address the markets this week.
Stocks Today: Earnings Season in full gear
With earnings season still in the early stages, expect quarterly results this week from the likes of Walt Disney, Uber and Arm Holdings. Stocks could react to those numbers on Tuesday.
Of the 397 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings through Friday, 76.8% beat profit projections versus the long-term average of 66.7%.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 57.20 points, or 0.2%, to 32,451.30 to lead stock gains today. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq also rose on the day, as the broader market also saw a slight uptick.
A jump in the price of oil pushed up the energy sector and led a group of stocks today.
Chipmakers, meanwhile, got a boost after Micron Technology satisfied traders by jumping 7.2% after an analyst upgrade. A Paramount Global’s partnership with Israeli dance studio Wix Play and a Tyson Foods’ earnings report moved stocks.
The fact that advancing issues outweighed decliners on stocks today shows that sentiment in the market remains positive. Both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq made new 52-week highs, suggesting a healthy level of confidence in the current path that the market is on.
Stocks Today: Central bank rate cuts
Buoyed by expectations that central banks might cut interest rates this year, global stock markets soared on Monday and stocks today followed suit in most of the major markets.
The lofty mood was underscored by last week’s weak labour-market report, which all-but-eliminated the outlook for higher US interest rates, bullish for stocks today.
The dollar index, which tracks the US currency against six major trading peers, traded lower for the fourth straight session after the jobs data posted the smallest jobs gain since October, easing that pushed stocks higher today.
The Federal Reserve’s chairman, Jerome Powell, said that rate hikes would ‘become less likely’ which, investors believe, means that cuts could come.
Top commodity news: Oil & gas trading opportunities!
‘There’s still a lot of uncertainty regarding rates,’ Brad Conger told The Wall Street Journal about the potential effects from the economy because the market ‘doesn’t know if the rates that we have now are high enough to slow the economy and reduce inflation. If inflation is still high, that’s going to continue to be a drag on stocks.’
Stocks Today: Wall Street Markets
Here’s what you missed today in Wall Street and world markets: US stocks were modestly higher today: the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.17%, while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite were up 0.55% and 0.60%, respectively.
In Europe today, stocks were also higher: the pan-regional STOXX 600 was up 0.52% as three policymakers at the European Central Bank predicted rate cuts due to easing inflation in the euro zone.
It was a positive day for stocks on the global front too. MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe rose 0.54%. The jump today was visible in currency movements as well. The euro and sterling gained against the dollar.
Furthermore, in a signal that Oil Rig ’76 did not execute, today’s stocks were driven by Goldman Sachs’s quarterly earnings forecasts, wherein the bank revised its EPS growth numbers for constituents of the STOXX 600 by -3.5 percentage points with a new number of 11.2% for 2024.
With plenty of moving parts, prices around the world were in flux.
Meanwhile, in bond markets, US Treasury yields ticked upward, as traders reweighed the impact of lacklustre job creation on the US economy’s temperature, which is still one of the key factors shaping the market’s view on stocks.
Stocks Today: Big commodities in play
Just like stocks today, oil prices fluctuated in response to geopolitical and economic stimuli.
Although the price of oil loomed large, other factors were playing a role as well: potential price hikes by the Saudis, and increasing tensions in the Middle East, all of which were part of the larger economic landscape of stocks today.
In Asia, meanwhile, stocks also rallied today, with China and Hong Kong indices marking strong advances, as stocks today continued their positive run globally.
Stocks in Europe rose on Wednesday after a morale-boosting call in the Bloomberg Opinion columns of economists Eli Lehnich and Pierre Sullivan for the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank to slash interest rates again. European equities closed the session at their highest in a week.
Stocks Today: STOXX 600 up
The pan-European STOXX 600 was up 0.5%, its highest price in a week, while the defence company Indra jumped after the Spanish company’s first-quarter profit surged 24% to a record €64 million. There was no trading in UK equities as it was a public holiday.
Stocks got an additional boost on comments from three European Central Bank policymakers – Philip Lane, Gediminas Simkus and Boris Vujcic – who all separately said that the strong inflation and growth data of late have confirmed their view that inflation should soon head back toward the central bank’s 2% target.
‘European stocks have had a shaky time this year – not from the coronavirus, but for a number of other reasons: the health of European companies, tensions in the Middle East, and the ECB’s policy outlook beyond June.
The note from analysts at Scotiabank read: ‘The ECB is worried that if negotiated wage rates continue to go up steeply, it would be more problematic to bring inflation risk under control.’ It’s not just wages. Today’s stock market is being run by economists.
So far this year, the STOXX 600 is up 6% – a slight lag on the 8.1% rise by its US counterpart, the S&P 500, whose rally is also exposing jitters over when the Federal Reserve will make its first interest rate cut.
Goldman Sachs has lifted its estimate for STOXX 600 companies’ 2024 earnings growth from 3% to 6%, saying that this is due to higher commodity prices, still-elevated inflation, a weak currency and stronger growth.
These factors, it says, have all affected stocks today.
At the stock level, Oslo’s energy-heavy all-share index was the best performer in the region this week, rising 1.4% tracking higher oil prices as Saudi Arabia announced hikes to June crude prices, and as prospects for a Gaza ceasefire deal dimmed.
Indra up
Meanwhile, on a more specific basis, Indra was up 8.8%, after reporting that first-quarter net profit jumped 40% with order activity above expectations amid heightened global tensions that have boosted demand for air defences. French oil group Maurel et Prom rose 7.3% after securing a special licence for its business in Venezuela.
In contrast, shares in Atos lost 4.4% after the French IT company, hampered by a pile of debt, said it had received four expressions of interest from investors to restructure debt and inject cash and that a restructuring is likely to result in a ‘massive dilution’ of existing shareholders.
Volvo profit jump
PostNL shares lost nearly 4% after it reported a wider-than-expected first-quarter loss at the Dutch postal firm.
Shares in Volvo Cars rose 1% after the car maker reported a 27% jump in April sales year on year, driven by strong demand for electric and hybrid vehicles. and shares in Danish hearing aid maker Demant A/S fell 3.6% as it missed sales targets in the first quarter. So that’s today’s mixed bag of stock moves around Europe.
Blue-chip stocks in India closed lower on Monday as a sell-off in state-run banks weighed on stocks on concerns that new regulatory guidelines could reduce their earnings. The Nifty 50 finished 0.15% lower at 22,442.70 points.
On the other hand, the broader 30-member S&P BSE Sensex edged up 0.02% to 73,895.54, with losses in state-run banks offset by gains in IT stocks and Kotak Mahindra Bank.
The Nifty PSU index, which tracks these state-run banks, fell 3.66% after the RBI draft rules, which proposed higher capital reserves for loans to under-construction infrastructure projects, sparked fears that these norms could further hurt margins of the lenders.
India stock shares
Shares of Punjab National Bank, for one, tumbled 6.41% today.
Despite the public sector banks anchoring the market lower, stocks today ended 0.25% lower, dragging down the heavyweight financial services index by nearly 1%, with a nearly 9% plunge in the shares of the state-run non-bank lender Power Finance Corps a major influence.
Lending a helping hand to financial stocks today, shares rose after Kotak Mahindra Bank reported a fourth-quarter profit 11% higher year-on-year, with beats in net interest income, non-interest income, fee income, and cost synergies.
On the technology front, US rate-sensitive IT stocks on the Nifty rose 0.94% as a shortfall in US job growth in April fuelled bets on two rate cuts this year against one prior to the data release.
Britannia jumped the most among the Nifty 50 today, climbing 6.7% after its fourth-quarter margin growth surprised analysts.
But with stocks for Titan down the most of those on the Nifty 50 – it lost 7.18% today – after the jeweller reported muted quarterly profits, as it saw steep discounts offset rising gold prices, and stocks across the Adani group’s seven listed companies still down between 0.3% and 4% today, after market regulators served notices of violations of disclosure norms last week.
At long last, stocks in the more domestically-oriented small- and mid-cap indices ended the day lower too, down 1.5% and 0.54% respectively, as the market recalibrates a broad range of sectors.