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By Nicholas
Jasinski | Tuesday, May 25 Wandering.
Stocks gave up their morning gains to close
down slightly today. There wasn't much of a catalyst for the midday reversal,
and trading action in general in recent days has felt like that of a market
in search of a direction. Inflation
concerns remain top of mind. Federal
Reserve officials have
emphasized that monetary policy will remain supportive of the economic
recovery for some time yet, but recent meeting minutes suggested that they
may be easing off the gas in the coming months. And companies across
industries are facing challenges related to their supply chains, raw
materials costs, or labor supply. It's a lot of moving parts. On the
pandemic front, the number of new Covid-19 cases reported in the U.S.
fell below 20,000 yesterday, according to data that was reported today.
It's a major symbolic milestone and the lowest weekday total in almost a
year. (Weekend numbers tend to be lower because not all states report new
cases then.) Hospitalizations
are also declining. It illustrates how far we have come in the fight against
the virus since vaccines began to be rolled out. The U.S. is
on track to have 50% of adults fully vaccinated in the coming days. And after
comparatively slow starts to their vaccination programs, other developed
countries and regions like Canada and the European Union are catching up.
Case counts and hospitalizations there are declining, too. It’s
allowing economies to reopen and business to return to normal. Too bad that
all of that post-pandemic optimism is already priced into the stock market.
Investors now have more complicated questions to navigate. But they
won't be answered just yet. The Dow Jones
Industrial Average and S&P 500 both slipped
0.2% today, while the Nasdaq
Composite ended practically flat, down just 0.03%. |
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DJIA: -0.24% to 34,312.46 The Hot
Stock: NVR +4% Best Sector:
Consumer Discretionary +0.3% |
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