At the high point during the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 2.2%. It closed with a gain of just 0.1% for the day.
The trend wasn’t limited to U.S. stocks. The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM) was up 1.26% at noon New York time but closed off 0.67% for the session.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 was down 0.89% today, the NASDAQ Composite off 2.20%, and the Russell 2000 lower by 0.52%.
The reversal was led by technology shares and recent market leaders. Twilio (TWLO), for example, had been down a modest 0.75% at noon but ended the day lower by a whipping 6.51%. NXP Semiconductors (NXPI) had been up 2.86% but closed down 0.05%. ASML had been up 1.38% but closed down 1.83%. Palo Alto Networks (PANW) had been imp 2.86% but close down 3.27%. You get the picture.
Surprisingly bank stocks, which begin earnings season with second quarter reports before the market open tomorrow, held relatively steady. Wells Fargo (WFC), probably the bank with the biggest chance of reporting deeply bad news tomorrow since it doesn’t have the ballast of a big investment banking unit that’s expected to help earnings at JPMorgan Chase (JPM), dropped just 0.20%.
Re-opening dependent stocks took a beating today with American Airlines (AAL) down 2.60% and Carnival (CCL) lower by 5.41%.
The combination of decent performance from bank stocks but deeply negative results from technology and re-opening stocks leads me to conclude that the big moving factor today was the continuing bad news on increasing coronavirus cases in the United States and the likelihood to more economic restrictions ahead.
