Stock Market Update: January 26, 2017
Here is a “Stock Market Update” from The Sevens Report: Stocks finally moved Tuesday, as the S&P 500 staged a modest rally following good economic data and well received (but not really positive) political headlines. The S&P 500 rose 0.66%.
Stocks were flat to start Wednesday trade thanks to generally “ok” economic data from Europe (the European and German flash PMIs were light). There were also a lot of earnings reports, but they were the normal gives and takes, and none of the big companies reporting really moved markets beyond their specific sector (JNJ weighed on healthcare, but that’s it).
After the flat open, stocks started moving higher following a strong January flash manufacturing PMI, and the gains accelerated following several political headlines.
First, the Trump/auto company CEOs meeting was uneventful; then Democrats unveiled a $ 1 trillion infrastructure spending bill, and finally the president signed executive orders to reopen negotiations on the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines. Stocks hit their highs early afternoon, and the S&P 500 made a new fractional all-time high before backing off just a bit into the close.
Stock Market Update: Trading Color
Yesterday was the first big Trump On day in markets since the first few days of 2017, as small caps and cyclicals handily outperformed.
The Russell 2000 rose 1.5%, more than doubling the S&P 500’s performance while cyclical sectors handily outperformed. Banks (KRE), financials (XLF), industrials (XLI) and basic materials (XLB) all rose more than 1%, with the
latter rising nearly 3% on a big DuPont (DD) earnings beat that pushed the Dow higher (they are heavily weighted in XLB, so the strength there was chemicals based, not commodity based).
Outside of DD earnings there weren’t really any big market movers, with the exception of JNJ weighing on the healthcare sector. XLV dropped 0.70% on the JNJ miss, although the weakness was somewhat isolated as the Healthcare Providers ETF (IHF) rose 0.29%.
Most of the remaining SPDRs we track were up about 0.60% (including consumer staples, which traded pretty well), although utilities were only fractionally higher on the rise in bond yields.
Bottom line, none of the political actions mentioned yesterday were surprises, but overall it was a generally business friendly day of headlines from Washington. That, combined with the PMIs, helped stocks rally.
