Monday, January 31, 2022

Pre-market indexes are mixed ahead of the final trading day of the month — a month to which most market participants will likely say “Good riddance.” It’s been so bad, in fact, that it would be easy to forget we started out its first few trading days notching new all-time highs on both the Dow and the S&P 500.

Right now, the Dow is sinking another -170 points while the S&P is -11. Interestingly, it is the Nasdaq bounding into the green this morning, +26 points at this hour. Month to date, the Dow has dropped -4.4%, the S&P is -7% and the Nasdaq is down a dismal -12%. Perhaps this morning’s up-bidding for the tech/growth-heavy Nasdaq — like its 3%+ gain on Friday — is a way to begin to correct this.

The biggest losers on the Nasdaq this month were among the biggest winners during the heart of the pandemic: Moderna (MRNA Quick QuoteMRNA - Free Report) , Netflix (NFLX Quick QuoteNFLX - Free Report) and Etsy (ETSY Quick QuoteETSY - Free Report) are down -37%, -34% and -33%, respectively. Those biggest gainers in the month tend to be in the energy space, like Chevron (CVX Quick QuoteCVX - Free Report) , up +9.9% as of Friday’s close.

We expect a big week for Q4 earnings, with companies like Amazon (AMZN Quick QuoteAMZN - Free Report) , Meta and Alphabet (GOOGL Quick QuoteGOOGL - Free Report) all posting after the closing bell later in the week. We also will see new monthly jobs totals this week, both in the private sector via the ADP (ADP Quick QuoteADP - Free Report) survey and Friday’s non-farm payrolls from the U.S. government. So there is a lot on tap for the coming week, and no Fed decisions to fret over; the Federal Open Market Committee won’t meet again until the first week of March.

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