The Standard & Poor’s 500 closed down 0.06% today, March 19. About as exciting as watching paint dry.
The NASDAQ Composite, down yesterday, reversed that drop and a little bit more by adding 0.76%. The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM), down 1.84% yesterday, gained 1.09 today. SunRun (RUN), down 9.00% yesterday, picked up 7.99% today. MGM Resorts International (MGM), Applied Materials (AMAT), and NXP Semiconductors (NXPI) all gained today–but not enough to make up yesterday’s losses.
See a pattern here?
The market went into one of it’s typical square the positions move ahead of the weekend. Nobody wants to be too far out in front of anything that might happen this week. U.S. and Chinese trade talks could see an outbreak of pie throwing. The Federal Reserve could decide the while Treasury bonds will count against bank reserve requirements again on March 31 (as the central bank announced today) stocks starting with the letters B, G, and V won’t. Embattled New York governor Andrew Cuomo could announced that as of Monday New York City restaurants could open at 41.5% of capacity (up from 35%) as long as the 423 candidates running for New York City mayor swear to make it a campaign promise never to eat pizza with a knife and fork.
But the market wasn’t about to let unfettered optimism break out either. And stocks that were down big yesterday only showed modest recoveries today. For example, Square (SQ) down 9.00% yesterday, regained 0.24% today. Twilio (TWLO) down 5.19%, picked up 1.07% today.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury continued its rise, but slowly for today’s session, tacking on just 1 basis point to 1.72%.
The CBOE S&P 500 Volatility Index (VIX) lost 3.01% to 20.93.
