Records set on 1st trading day
Technology stocks, mix of retailers account for big share of gains
Wall Street got 2022 off to a solid start Monday with more record highs for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
The S&P 500 rose 0.6%, and the Dow finished 0.7% higher. Both indexes eclipsed the record highs they set last
Wednesday. The Nasdaq composite rose 1.2%.
Technology stocks and a mix of retailers and other companies that rely on consumer spending accounted for a big share of the gains. Apple rose 2.5%, closing just shy of becoming the first company to hit a market capitalization of $3 trillion. It briefly traded above that level during the day.
Tesla jumped 13.5% for the biggest gain in the S&P 500 after after reporting strong delivery numbers for 2021.
Bond yields rose significantly. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 1.64% from 1.51% Friday. That helped push up shares in banks, which rely on higher yields to charge more lucrative interest on loans. Bank of America rose 3.8%.
The market’s solid start to 2022 follows another banner year for stocks on Wall Street. The S&P 500 closed out 2021 with a gain of 26.9%, or a total return of 28.7%, including dividends. That’s nearly as much as the benchmark index gained in 2019.
The S&P 500’s latest milestones, following the 70 record highs it posted last year, are a sign investors remain bullish about stocks, despite the recent spike in COVID-19 cases from virus’s fastspreading omicron variant and expectations that the Federal Reserve will begin pushing up interest rates sometime this year to fight rising inflation.
The S&P 500 rose 30.38 points to 4,796.56. The Dow gained 246.76 points to 36,585.06. The Nasdaq rose 187.83 points to 15,832.80.
Smaller company stocks also rose. The Russell 2000 gained 27.24 points, or 1.2%, to 2,272.56.
The airport authority keeps an updated list of nonstop flights that depart from Rickenbacker International Airport and John Glenn Columbus International Airport on its website. The majority of nonstop flights leave from John Glenn.
Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, roughly half of the passengers leaving Columbus by air were traveling for leisure, according to officials at the Columbus Regional Airport Authority, which operates the city’s airports. Those travelers now make up a clear majority and the authority responded by adding more flights to popular vacation spots.
“Business travel went away when the pandemic started, and what’s been stronger of the two is leisure,” said Betsy Taylor, a manager of passenger airline business development for the airport authority.
Leisure travel has largely recovered as Ohioans who put off vacations during the height of the coronavirus pandemic began to take their unused time off, she said. But business travel still lags when compared with pre-pandemic travel.
The number of nonstop flights puts Columbus roughly in line with similarly sized cities, Taylor said.
The airport authority added 22 nonstop flights during the COVID pandemic. Some of them are only offered seasonally when demand is highest. Those flights are:
● Austin - Southwest (becomes daily
March 10)
● Boston - American
● Cancun - American (seasonal)
● Cancun- Frontier (launching Jan. 21)
● Charleston - Breeze
● Charleston - United (summer seasonal)
● Fort Myers - United (seasonal)
● Hartford - Breeze
● Hilton Head Island - United (summer seasonal)
● Los Angeles - Spirit
● Miami - Southwest (seasonal)
● Myrtle Beach - Southwest (summer seasonal)
● New Orleans - Breeze
● Norfolk - Allegiant (seasonal)
● Norfolk - Breeze
● Palm Beach - Breeze (launching Feb. 19)
● Panama City Beach - Southwest (seasonal)
● Pensacola - Spirit (seasonal)
● Portland, Maine - United (summer seasonal)
● Sarasota/bradenton - Southwest
● Tampa - Breeze
● Tampa - Frontier (seasonal) And 11 nonstop flights returned from last year. They are:
● Boston - Delta
● Cancun - Vacation Express (announced return March)
● Fort Myers - Spirit
● Myrtle Beach - Spirit
● New Orleans - Spirit
● New YORK-JFK - American
● New YORK-JFK - Delta
● New York-laguardia - American
● St. Louis - Southwest
● Toronto - Air Canada
● Washington D.C. - National Southwest
The TSA recently extended a mask mandate that requires passengers to wear face coverings in terminals, on airport shuttles, and on airplanes. The mandate now expires March 18. pcooley@dispatch.com @Patrickacooley