Dow Falls, S&P 500, Nasdaq Records; Google, Tesla, IBM, UnitedHealth and More Movers

USA, Featured1 month ago9 Views

A messy session for the stock market on Thursday ended with closing highs for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq. The Dow Jones Industrial Average wasn’t so lucky.

The Dow fell 316 points, or 0.7%. The S&P 500 rose 0.1%. The Nasdaq Composite closed up 0.2%. The S&P and Nasdaq each built on their record closes from Wednesday, while the Dow took a big step back after pulling within four points of its Dec. 4 record.

Market breadth was mixed all day but weakened heading into the close after the market’s rally finally showed signs of broadening earlier this week.

There wasn’t one defining headline that drove the market. Instead, Wall Street was pulled in a lot of different directions due to a wave of earnings reports, as well as a disclosure from UnitedHealth that it was complying with requests from the Department of Justice.

The Dow missed out on a post-earnings gain from Alphabet, while its weighing of members by stock price rather than market cap meant a gain for Nvidia was overshadowed by declines for UNH, Honeywell International, and International Business Machines.

The yield on the 2-year Treasury note rose to 3.92%. The 10-year yield was up to 4.41.% Initial jobless claims were lower than expected—signalling continued resilience in the labor market. President Donald Trump was set to tour the Federal Reserve’s historic Eccles Building in a move that could be an escalation of his pressure campaign against Fed Chair Jerome Powell.

Though Trump has criticized Powell for keeping interest steady, any moves viewed by the bond market as a blow to the central bank’s independence could send bond yields higher despite the president’s stated desire to lower mortgage rates.

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