markets
Focus continues to be on big technology stocks
NEW YORK, Sept 10, (AP): U.S. stocks are swinging between gains and losses on Thursday, as Wall Street turns mixed following a week of sudden, jarring shifts. The S&P 500 was up 0.1% in midday trading, after earlier jerking from a gain of 0.8% to a loss of 0.5%.
It follows up on a wild stretch where the index careened from its worst three-day slump since June to its best day in nearly three months.
Tech stocks have been at the center of the market’s swings, hurt by criticism that their recession-defying surge in recent months was overdone. The Nasdaq, which is full of tech stocks, was up 0.6% and on pace for a second day of gains. But stocks within it were bouncing up and down, and it’s still below its record set last week after dropping 10% from last Thursday through Tuesday.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 8 points, or less than 0.1%, at 27,949, as of 11:49 a.m. Eastern time.
The market will likely lack any solid direction for the next few months as investors weigh several key issues, said Rod von Lipsey, managing director at UBS Private Wealth Management.
“Two things everybody is waiting for: Who is going to win the election, and are we going to find a vaccine for the virus?” he said. “Those two
questions are impossible for us to answer in this particular quarter.”
He said big investors are either waiting on the sidelines or in a neutral position on expectations that markets will stay volatile through the uncertainty.
“We’re not all sure where the economy is going to head from here,” he said.
Thursday’s headline economic report showed that 884,000 workers applied for unemployment benefits last week. The number was flat from last week’s tally, which was revised higher, and it’s the lowest it’s been since the number of layoffs began exploding in March due to the coronavirus pandemic.
But the tally was still higher than
economists expected, and it’s an indication that layoffs remain stuck at a dispiritingly high level. Economists called the report disappointing.
A separate report showed that inflation remains very weak at the wholesale level, though it was stronger last month than economists had forecast.
The Federal Reserve has said that it’s willing to allow inflation to run higher than its target level before raising interest rates, if inflation had been too low before that. That’s key for investors because low rates can boost stock prices.
Treasury yields held relatively steady following the reports, and the yield on the 10-year note ticked up to
0.71% from 0.70% late Wednesday.
The market’s focus continues to be on big technology stocks, in large part because they’ve grown so big that their movements can move broad market indexes almost by themselves. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook and Google’s parent company alone account for 23% of the S&P 500, for example.
Many analysts say the recent tumult for technology stocks isn’t that surprising given how high they had soared. Apple more than doubled in less than five months through the pandemic, Tesla surged 74.1% last month alone and Zoom Video Communications earlier this month was up nearly 573% for 2020.
While Big Tech is indeed benefiting from the shift to online life that the pandemic and ensuing stay-athome economy has accelerated, critics said their stocks prices simply shot too high. This past week’s selloff blew off some of that steam, but analysts question how much selling is left in the pipeline.
Apple rose as much as 2.7% Thursday morning, but it quickly swung to a loss of 1.5%. It was close to flat in midday trading. Tesla and Zoom, though, remained at least 2.9% higher for the day.
The gains are coming even as the odds grow longer that Congress will be able to deliver more aid to the economy before November’s elections, support that many investors say is crucial after federal unemployment benefits and other stimulus expired. Partisan disagreements on Capitol Hill have kept Congress at a seeming impasse.
Quest Diagnostics rose 4.3% for one of the bigger gains in the S&P 500 after it raised its forecasts for sales and profits this year.
On the losing end were energy producers after the price of crude oil weakened. Occidental Petroleum fell 3.6%, and Devon Energy dropped 3.5%.
Slightly more stocks in the S&P 500 were falling than rising.
European stock markets were dipping. The German DAX lost 0.2%, and the French CAC 40 fell 0.4%. The FTSE 100 in London dropped 0.2%.
Asian markets were mixed. Japan’s Nikkei 225 and South Korea’s Kospi both rose 0.9%.
The Hang Seng in Hong Kong slipped 0.6%, and stocks in Shanghai lost 0.6%.
Benchmark U.S. crude slipped 0.4% to $37.89 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, dipped 0.5% to $40.60 per barrel.
BERLIN, Sept 10, (AP): A group representing Germany’s machinery industry said Tuesday it expects production to drop 17% this year as the sector struggles with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic and international trade tensions.
Orders for machinery, a major German export, were down 16% in this year’s first seven months compared with a year earlier, while production declined 14%, the VDMA association said. It cited the effects of the pandemic, protectionism in international trade, and change affecting the auto industry - a key customer.
Official data released Tuesday showed that Germany’s overall exports were up 4.7% in July compared with the previous month. That was the third consecutive month-on-month gain following huge declines at the height of Europe’s coronavirus lockdowns - but a much smaller increase than the 14.9% seen in June. In yearon-year terms, exports were down 11%.
That is in line with recent data showing that increases in German factory orders and industrial production also slowed in July.
The government said last week that the economy is performing better than expected following the easing of Germany’s lockdown restrictions, which were less drastic than in some other European countries.
It is now predicting that the economy will contract by 5.8% this year, a somewhat more optimistic outlook than the 6.3% it forecast in late April.