You can tell a lot about market sentiment by watching how it reacts to good news from individual stocks.
Yesterday, both Amazon (AMZN), a current market leader, and Intel (INTC), a former market leaders and still an important technology sector stock, both reported really–I mean really–strong earnings for the their quarter.
Today, the individual stocks were up. Amazon gained a huge 6.83% and Intel was up an even huger 9.29%.
But they didn’t take the wider market with them.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 was down 0.48% at the close The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1.12%. The Russell 2000, which was up yesterday on the GDP growth surprise fell 1.21% today.
And even th technology heavy NASDAQ Composite and NASDAQ 100 could barely manage a slight advance. The NASDAQ Composite closed up 0.38% and the NASDQ 100, and index that Amazon heavily influences, cloud up only 0.50%.
It’s not a positive sign for the wider market when great news from individual high profile stocks, one of them one of the 7 giant cap stocks that had fueled gains earlier in 2023, doesn’t result in gains for the day.
In the short run, this market is ruled by worries–about the chance that the Gaza war will become a general Middle East War, about lackluster guidance in earnings reports looking ahead to the fourth quarter and to early 2024, about yields on the 10-year Treasury that continue o press toward 5%.
The CBOE S&P 500 Volatility Index (VIX), which hasn’t been a very good indicator of market risk lately, looks like it may have finally joined the action. The so-called “Fear Index” gained another 12.24% today to 21.27. On October 11, the VIX was at 16.09. That a 32% climb in a little over two weeks.
