S&P, Nasdaq enjoy boost from big tech firms, Dow dips

Oct 18 (Reuters) – The S&P and Nasdaq had been gaining on Monday with a serving to hand from heavyweight know-how firms as traders appeared optimistic in regards to the third-quarter earnings season.

Whereas shares had been underneath stress in early buying and selling attributable to considerations about slowing financial development in China and inflation, significantly in oil costs, the S&P had turned firmly constructive by late morning.

5 of the 11 main S&P 500 sectors had been final larger, led by shopper discretionary , know-how , and communications companies .

In know-how, Apple Inc was up 0.6% as traders digested the corporate’s unveiling of recent Mac laptop computer computer systems with extra highly effective processor chips.

With only a small minority of firms having reported quarterly outcomes to date, traders had been eager for some excellent news forward and on the lookout for locations to take a position their money, in keeping with John Augustine, chief funding officer at Huntington Nationwide Financial institution in Columbus, Ohio.

“It looks like a little bit little bit of FOMO (concern of lacking out) is occurring, blended with this wall of money on the sidelines,” mentioned Augustine, noting that energetic managers had been turning to shares to place themselves for the fourth quarter and that “people are realizing that they are not going to get a return for bonds or money this 12 months.”

By 2:28 p.m. EDT, the Dow Jones Industrial Common fell 72.44 factors, or 0.21%, to 35,222.32, the S&P 500 gained 8.23 factors, or 0.18%, to 4,479.6 and the Nasdaq Composite added 92.84 factors, or 0.62%, to 14,990.18.

Sentiment was damper earlier within the day after China recorded its slowest tempo of financial development in a 12 months for the third quarter, damage by energy shortages and wobbles within the property sector.

However traders had been inspired by what they noticed in U.S. earnings studies to date whereas preserving a give attention to how firms mitigate the impression on earnings from supply-chain disruptions, labor shortages and better prices.

“There may be some weak information out of China, which is regarding on a world foundation, after which market members got here into this earnings with a really pessimistic view however banks dramatically exceeded expectations,” mentioned Thomas Hayes, managing member at Nice Hill Capital Llc in New York.

Forecast-beating outcomes from large U.S. lenders final week set a constructive tone for third-quarter earnings season, with analysts anticipating S&P 500 earnings to indicate a 32% rise from a 12 months in the past, in keeping with Refinitiv information.

Among the many S&P’s high boosts for the session to date was Tesla Inc , up 3.5%, forward of its earnings report this week. Different megacap know-how firms on the rise included Fb Inc , up 3%, Microsoft Corp up 0.9% and Amazon.com Inc up 0.8%, along with Apple’s beneficial properties.

Johnson & Johnson , Netflix Inc , Verizon Communications Inc and oilfield companies firm Baker Hughes Co are additionally attributable to report quarterly outcomes this week.

Walt Disney Co slipped 3% after Barclays downgraded the media large’s inventory to “equal weight” from “chubby.”

Declining points outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.17-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.29-to-1 ratio favored decliners.

The S&P 500 posted 36 new 52-week highs and no new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 55 new highs and 100 new lows.

Reporting by Sinead Carew in New York and by Devik Jain and Shreyashi Sanyal in Bengaluru
Modifying by Arun Koyyur and Matthew Lewis

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