Market Report

Stocks end lower in rocky trading

Trader Richard Newman works on the !oor of the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday. Stocks closed down slightly on Wall Street as the market stabilized after three days of tumult.
Trader Richard Newman works on the !oor of the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday. Stocks closed down slightly on Wall Street as the market stabilized after three days of tumult.

The Dow Jones industrial average moved nearly 500 points during trading Wednesday before closing down 19 points, or 0.08 percent, at 24,893 after another shaky day. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 index didn't move far off its baseline, closing down 13 points, or 0.5 percent, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite struggled to stay in positive territory all day and lost 63 points, or 0.9 percent, by end of trading.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond rose Wednesday to close at 2.84 percent. The 10-year is a key indicator for the market because a 3 percent yield is looked upon by investors as a motive for people to flee the risk of stocks for the relative safety of bonds. When bond prices go lower, their yield increases.

"In 2018, volatility may be the new normal," said Michael Farr, president of Farr, Miller & Washington, a Washington, D.C.-based money management firm. "Nobody minds upside volatility. It's the downside volatility that causes heartburn."

Corporate earnings continued to be impressive as Disney and social media company Snap both beat expectations. With more than half the S&P 500 through earnings season, 78.5 percent are besting their targets, a sign of strength in the economy.

"The revenue results are encouraging and should gain strength in the coming quarters from currency translation," said Joe Abbott, Yardeni's chief quantitative strategist.

Industrials and financials were the only positive sectors in the S&P 500. The big loser was energy, which dropped when oil prices plunged more than 2 percent. Low crude-oil prices lower the profits for oil companies.

Among the Dow's top performers were Boeing, United Technologies and Walmart. Apple, Microsoft and Exxon Mobil were big drags on the blue-chip basket.

"We're having a transition to a new normal, but it's not the new normal everyone expected," said Paul Ehrlichman of ClearBridge Investments. "We were expecting deflation and low growth forever. Now we are getting strong synchronized growth and signs of reflation. Markets are adjusting to one of the broadest recoveries we have seen in a decade.

"We are transitioning to new leadership in the markets," he said. "That's all this correction is."

Ehrlichman said investors were moving out of bonds and technology stocks, and into financial stocks and foreign markets.

President Donald Trump, who was mum during the past three days of wild gyrations in the global markets, took to Twitter on Wednesday morning to weigh in: "In the 'old days,' when good news was reported, the Stock Market would go up. Today, when good news is reported, the Stock Market goes down. Big mistake, and we have so much good (great) news about the economy!"

In trading overnight, Asia markets rebounded on the heels of Wall Street's end-of-day recovery. But those gains were brief and vanished quickly, deepening questions about what comes next.

Japan's Nikkei index and Hong Kong's Hang Seng surged in early trading, then dropped, with the former closing up 0.16 percent and the latter closing down 0.89 percent.

Australia closed up 0.7 percent. Shanghai and Shenzhen closed down 1.8 and 1.2 percent, respectively.

By afternoon in Europe, indexes were also creeping upward, apparently buoyed by Wall Street's turnaround Tuesday. The Pan-European Stoxx 600 was up by more than 1 percent. London's FTSE and Frankfurt's DAX also moved higher.

The modest rebound helped calm nerves after a terrifying Tuesday that saw across-the-board drops in the Asia-Pacific region and Europe.

It came after a dramatic late rally on Wall Street. The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 567 points Tuesday after a volatile day of trading that included a swing of more than 1,168 points. The Standard & Poor's 500 stock index ended up 1.7 percent, while the Nasdaq was up 2.1 percent.

Experts expect more ups and downs to come. "I'm afraid panic was only eased temporarily," said Zhu Zhenxin, chief analyst at Beijing's Rushi Advanced Institute of Finance.

Business on 02/08/2018

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