Technolog y shares lead market rally
S&P posts 4th-straight weekly loss as volatile month continues
Stocks shook off another bout of volatile trading and finished solidly higher Friday, led by gains in technolog y and health care companies. Despite the rally, the S&P 500 still posted its fourth straight weekly loss, extending Wall Street ’s September swoon.
The S&P 500 rose 1.6 percent after f lip-f lopping between small gains and losses a few times in the early going. Stocks have been erratic this month, with indexes setting new highs to start the month and then falling sharply as investors worried that values for some of technolog y giants had risen too high.
The benchmark index ended the week with a 0.6 percent loss for its first four-week losing streak in more than a year. The index is now down 5.8 percent for September, following five straight months of gains.
The S&P 500 came within striking distance of a 10 percent drop from its all-time high earlier this week, what Wall Street calls a correction. Friday ’s gains ref lect, in part, traders taking advantage of the selling to snap up stocks at lower prices, said David Lyon, global investment specialist at J.P. Morgan Private Bank.
“You’re getting a market that got close to a 10 percent correction, so you’re starting to see buyers step in to buy the dip,” Lyon said.
Fund managers also tend to make moves toward the end of a quarter to bolster their portfolios, another reason for the end-of-the-week buying spree, he said.
The S&P 500 rose 51.87 points to 3,298.46. The Dow
Jones Industrial Average gained 358.52 points, or 1.3 percent, to 27,173.96. The Nasdaq composite climbed 241.30 points, or 2.3 percent, to 10,913.56.
Smaller stocks also notched gains. The Russell 2000 index of small-cap stocks picked up 23.09 points, or 1.6 percent, to 1,474.91.
Stocks have struggled this month amid a long list of concerns. Chief among them is that stocks may have gotten too expensive following their record-breaking run through the summer, after storming 60 percent higher. Critics say Big Tech stocks in particular rose too high, even after accounting for their tremendous growth even as the coronavirus weakened the economy.
“This week, and the month of September, is really what we’re calling the give-back month,” Lyon said. “(Stock) valuations got expensive and this is a natural settling of the market, kind of giving back some of those advance returns that were probably ahead of themselves.”
Big Tech stocks recovered from an early slide. Apple gained 3.8 percent, Microsoft rose 2.3 percent and Google’s parent company added 1.1 percent.
Traders also bid up shares in cruise lines. Norwegian Cruise Line notched the biggest gain in the S&P 500, vaulting 13.7 percent. Carnival jumped 9.7 percent and Royal Caribbean Group climbed 7.7 percent.
Recently, investors’ frustration has also grown with the inability of Congress to deliver more aid to the economy after weekly unemployment benefits and other stimulus expired.
Democrats in the House of Representatives are paring back their proposal for stimulus in hopes of jumpstarting talks with the White House, but investors are skeptical something can happen soon. Deep partisan divisions have kept Congress from acting, and tensions are on the
tentative and will have to come after basic infrastructure renovation, they hope to open 120 rooms by March, said Thomas Zawadski, director of business development and finance at the Buffalo-based Savarino Companies, which is working with Fu to redevelop the property.
Eventually, they could invest between $60 million and $100 million in the property, he said.
As well as renovations, they want to turn a group of freestanding cabin-like units, which had been sold as timeshares, into a retail and dining center on the grounds.
In the center of that they want to place an ice skating rink that could ser ve as a roller rink during the summer.
Operated by New York City restaurateur Salvatore “Ricky ” Caridi and his cousin Ross Caridi in the 1970s, the 376-room hotel resort boomed in those days despite its relatively isolated location near the intersection of Routes 32 and 23A outside the village of Catskill.
The resort has 52,000 square feet of exhibition, meeting and banquet space as well as two outdoor pools and in indoor pool.
The resort hosted large conventions for groups like the Sons of Italy, staged boxing matches and concerts with headliners such as Tom Jones, who performed there in the 1990s in the resort ’s “Buckingham Palace” theater.
Eventually though, as the
Catskills fell out of favor as a resort destination, Friar Tuck hit financial problems, including ta x liens.
Zawadski said the recent real estate boom in the Hudson Valley and Catskills is bringing a turnaound to tourism in the area.
Much of that stems from the COVID-19 pandemic, which is prompting New York City residents to seek upstate homes.
“What we’re experiencing now is the Catskills are kind of reigniting again,” Zawadski said. “They are being rediscovered by people from New York City.”
“That area had a pretty good summer along with Lake George,” he added.
Yu is also working with the Savarino group in Buffalo to redevelop what was that city ’s AM&A department store into housing and retail space.
They had earlier looked at raising money through the federal EB-5 visa program for that project.
In that, foreign nationals can receive a U.S. visa if they invest $900,000 in a new business that will create jobs.
Zawadzki said they may in the future seek financing for part of Friar Tuck through that program.
For now, the focus at Friar Tuck will be rebuilding basic infrastructure, which could mean removing asbestos and updating the resort ’s 70s-era self-contained water and sewer system. “It ’s almost like rebuilding a small town,” he said.