The stock market on Wall Street first rose and then fell. The S&P 500 index fell by more than 1%. Together with the other two major indexes, the bond market fell sharply. The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury bond once surged by 20 basis points. The market reviews the performance of US companies and the trend of interest rates. Twitter was acquired by the major shareholder Musk, and the share price increase was greatly narrowed. The U.S. financial market holiday on Friday, and the S&P and Nasdaq fell more than 2% on Thursday and Sunday.
Free real-time quotes for U.S. stocks, foreign exchange, and cryptocurrencies, and get relevant news alerts from your own portfolio.
April 14 (Thursday) Market Conditions
l Dow Jones It was down 113.36 points, or 0.33 percent, at 34,451.23. On Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.78%.
l S&P 500 Index It was down 54.00 points, or 1.21%, at 4,392.59. It fell 2.13% for the week.
l Nasdaq Index It was down 292.51 points, or 2.14%, at 13,351.08. It fell 2.63% for the week.
l New York May Oil Futures It closed at $106.95 a barrel, up $2.70, or 2.6%. It rose 8.8% for the week.
l New York June futures It ended its 5-day rally and closed at $1,974.9 an ounce, down $9.8 or 0.5%. It rose 1.5% on the week.
l U.S. 10-year Treasury bond yield It closed at 2.828 percent, up 14.1 pips.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk offered to buy all of Twitter’s shares at $54.2 per share, an regarding 18% premium to the previous day’s closing price, valued at $43 billion. However, Twitter’s stock price did not rise above the $50 level throughout the day, and Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who is also a major shareholder, quickly refused. He later said he was “not sure” if he might actually buy the company, and said he had a “Plan B” if Twitter’s board rejected the suggestion. Twitter shares opened regarding 5.8% higher and continued to decline, and closed only regarding 1.3% higher at $45.08.
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley announced results. The two major Wall Street investment banks also “made war fortunes”, benefiting from the market volatility caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the income of the trading department was better than expected. The stock prices of the two stocks have developed individually.
Debt yields did not rise sharply to technology stocks, Tesla and Apple fell 3%, and Nvidia and AMD fell more than 4%. Defensive stocks fared better, with Pfizer holding firm while Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, Walmart and Costco were soft. Travel stocks performed well. Delta, which sent its results the day before, rose another 3.2%, but Southwest Airlines rose 9.2%. Nike and Catepillar bucked the trend and rose 6.7% and 4.3% respectively.
U.S. economic data was mixed, with retail sales picking up in March, but mostly supported by gasoline spending. Unadjusted sales rose 0.5% month-on-month, missing expectations, while excluding sales fell 0.3%.
On the other hand, the University of Michigan’s consumer confidence index rose to 65.7 in April from 59.4 in March, a three-month high and far exceeding expectations, reflecting that rising wages and an improving economy have boosted people’s confidence in personal finances. Confidence, or help ease fears of a recession.
In terms of interest rates, the No. 3 figure in the US Federal Reserve supports an interest rate hike by half a percentage point next month, which seems to be no suspense. New York Fed President John Williams said an accelerated pace of rate hikes, including a 0.5 percentage point hike, would be a “reasonable choice” for the Fed, given the current low level of interest rates.
“We do need to get policy back to a more neutral level,” he told Bloomberg.
