NEW YORK: The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq rose on Monday after a week of choppy trading spurred on by mixed quarterly results from big technology companies, while Peloton jumped on media reports of interest from potential buyers including Amazon.
Five of the 11 major S&P sectors advanced, with consumer discretionary stocks leading morning gains.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq had a choppy start to February after Facebook owner Meta Platforms lost $200 billion from its market value on disappointing results last week, while Amazon.com Inc gained just as much on plans of hiking its Prime subscription rate.
“Markets finished out pretty decently last week after a tough month of January, so it does seem that you had capitulation on that Monday, and since then the market is trying to work its way up,” said Thomas Hayes, managing member at Great Hill Capital LLC in New York.
“Higher earnings are helpful in the sense that estimates finally ticked up.”
Of the 278 companies in the S&P 500 that have posted earnings as of Friday, 78.4% reported above analysts’ expectations, according to Refinitiv data.
Meatpacker Tyson Foods Inc climbed 10.3% after its first-quarter profit nearly doubled and surged past estimates, boosted by higher prices.
Peloton Interactive Inc jumped 28.4% on media reports that Amazon and Nike are exploring potential buyout offers for the exercise bike maker.
At 09:47 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 70.00 points, or 0.20%, at 35,019.74, the S&P 500 was up 5.66 points, or 0.13%, at 4,506.19, and the Nasdaq Composite was up 104.79 points, or 0.74%, at 14,202.80.
An unexpectedly strong jobs report last week raised concerns about aggressive policy tightening by the US Federal Reserve, ahead of key inflation data for January that is due on Thursday.
Markets are now pricing in a one-in-three chance the Fed might hike by a full 50 basis points in March and the prospect of rates reaching 1.5% by year end.
Budget airline Frontier Group Holdings fell 2.9% after agreeing to buy rival Spirit Airlines Inc in a $2.9 billion deal.
Spirit Airlines surged 15.2%, while other carriers United Airlines Holdings Inc, Delta Air Lines and American Airlines Group Inc rose about 3% each.
US-listed shares of China’s Alibaba Group Holding fell 6.3% after the company registered an additional 1 billion American depositary shares, raising speculation that it could allow large shareholder SoftBank Group Corp to sell its stake more easily.
Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 1.42-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and a 2.29-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.
The S&P index recorded two new 52-week highs and four new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 18 new highs and 25 new lows.
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