Stock Market Today: Dow Falls, S&P 500 Wavers, Nasdaq Rises; Oracle, Intel, AMD, Tesla, More Movers – Barron’s
A heavy slide in financial stocks pushed the Dow lower on Friday, cementing a second consecutive weekly decline for the blue-chip index.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.6%, or 274 points, on Friday. The S&P 500 was flat while the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.3%.
Despite the Dow’s back-to-back weekly loss, the index remains about one percent off from a record close.
Goldman Sachs, American Express, and JPMorgan Chase were some of the biggest losers in the Dow. Shares of digital payment provider Visa and the insurance company Travelers also fell.
The financials sector was down 1.4% on Friday, making it the most-strained sector in the market.
President Donald Trump this week called for Congress to cap credit-card interest rates at 10% for a year, a move that would likely hurt financial companies’ margins.
It “would be an economic disaster,” said JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday. “Of course we want affordability,” but the economic policies must be thought through, he added.
Investors overexposed to the dollar may be reviewing their portfolios on Friday. The U.S. Dollar Index, which measures the value of the greenback against a basket of foreign currencies, was down 0.9% on Friday and is down by a similar amount so far this year.
Increased investor hedging is “one possible culprit, but we think the majority of the weakness was a reaction to news headlines about [foreign exchange] hedging versus actual hedging flow,” wrote a team of Wells Fargo strategists led by Michael Schumacher in a Friday note.
The push lower in the dollar comes amid volatility in the price of the Japanese yen, which spiked twice suddenly on Friday. Traders are alert to the prospect of an intervention from the Japanese government to push the yen higher. One explanation for the yen’s weakness this year is the prospect of fiscal stimulus. Whether it takes the shape of tax cuts or increased government spending, fiscal stimulus often raises income in the short-run but can affect the price of a nation’s currency.
