DOW’S 32,000 BOW!
Stim spurs record
The Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed the 32,000 mark to hit a record high Monday after the Senate OK’d a stimulus bill over the weekend to boost the economy’s recovery from the coronavirus crisis.
The blue-chip index climbed to an intraday record of 32,148.04 before ending the day higher at 306.14 points, or 1 percent, to 31,802.44 following the Senate’s Saturday passage of President Biden’s $1.9 trillion spending plan.
The Democrat-controlled House is expected to pass the stimulus bill later this week, paving the way for the president to sign it into law before current unemployment aid programs expire on March 14.
“Now you have a scenario in which the market is broadening,” Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial, told The Post. “Every positive data release on the vaccine campaign, for example, becoming more successful, this $1.9 trillion [stimulus] — all of this underpins that the economy is normalizing.”
But prospects for an economic reopening and rising bond yields only served to put pressure on Silicon Valley stocks, which benefited from the lockdowns forcing people to spend more time online instead of out and about with friends.
The Nasdaq slid 2.4 percent to 12,609.16 as investors moved out of tech and into stocks that stand to be buoyed by a rebounding economy, like financials and utilities.
All of the so-called FAANG tech names — Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google parent Alphabet — ended the day in the red Monday, as did video conferencing app Zoom and online workout company Peloton. Elon Musk’s Tesla ended the day down 5.8 percent.
“I would expect further downside for technology and related names to unwind the euphoric sentiment in recent months,” said David Keller, chief market strategist at Stockcharts.com.
The rally in other sectors suggested that Wall Street’s fears about rising yields for US government bonds may be starting to wane even with the feds set to inject another load of money into the economy.
Yields for Treasury bonds, which move inversely to price, have climbed in recent weeks amid concerns about the coronavirus stimulus spending boosting inflation. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen shrugged off those fears Monday, saying she did not think the latest package would drive up consumer prices.