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Markets across all major indices spent not one moment in negative territory today, as the “pivot party” continues nearly one full week of trading. A late surge into the close has brought the blue-chip Down index to a new all-time high — +251 points, +0.68%, to 37,557 for the first time ever. The S&P 500 closed within a percentage point of its all-time high, +0.59% on the session. The Nasdaq grew nearly another 100 points, +0.68%, and the small-cap Russell 2000 — which flew above the other indices all day — closed up +2.01%.
A good example of what’s been going on in this stampede higher can be seen in Affirm Holdings (AFRM - Free Report) , the FinTech buy-now, pay-later upstart reported a finalized deal with Walmart (WMT - Free Report) where the company’s self-checkout boxes will find themselves in the brick-and-mortar stores (Affirm had been part of Walmart’s online checkout business). A heavily shorted stock, this news had shorts covering throughout the day today, and the stock finished up +15% on the day.
For the Dow, heavy machinery manufacturer Caterpillar (CAT - Free Report) gained +2.5% on the day and Intel (INTC - Free Report) was up +2.1%. No fewer than 12 of the 30 stocks on this index were up at least +1% on the session, including Travelers (TRV - Free Report) , Nike (NKE - Free Report) and Goldman Sachs (GS - Free Report) . Favorable sentiment toward financial institutions off a pretty low base are helping these stocks outperform the market.
However, FedEx (FDX - Free Report) shares are sliding -6.5% at this hour, following its fiscal Q2 report that saw misses on both top and bottom lines — earnings of $3.99 per share was beneath the $4.14 expected, on revenues of $22.2 billion, coming up short of the $22.33 billion in the Zacks consensus. Full-year earnings estimates are fairly steady with the company’s early iteration — between $17-18.50 per share; analysts had been expecting $18.19 per share.
FedEx’s Express margins missed pretty considerably, bringing in just +1.7% for the quarter — less than half the +3.6% analysts were looking for. The company cited an “uncertain demand environment,” and when you are one of the companies that delivers goods to both enterprises and individuals on a wide, vast scale, this may be something of an economic red-flag going up heading into the second half of the company’s fiscal year.
Tomorrow morning, we’ll get an early look at the Q3 U.S. Current Account, Existing Home Sales for November and Consumer Confidence for December. Normally, none of these metrics would be enough on their own — or even lumped together — to trip up a bull market like we’ve seen over the past week; if we are to see a cooling down of trading, it may have more to do with rising valuation levels here in the final trading weeks of the year.
Image: Bigstock
Dow Hits New All-Time High, S&P Within 1%
Markets across all major indices spent not one moment in negative territory today, as the “pivot party” continues nearly one full week of trading. A late surge into the close has brought the blue-chip Down index to a new all-time high — +251 points, +0.68%, to 37,557 for the first time ever. The S&P 500 closed within a percentage point of its all-time high, +0.59% on the session. The Nasdaq grew nearly another 100 points, +0.68%, and the small-cap Russell 2000 — which flew above the other indices all day — closed up +2.01%.
A good example of what’s been going on in this stampede higher can be seen in Affirm Holdings (AFRM - Free Report) , the FinTech buy-now, pay-later upstart reported a finalized deal with Walmart (WMT - Free Report) where the company’s self-checkout boxes will find themselves in the brick-and-mortar stores (Affirm had been part of Walmart’s online checkout business). A heavily shorted stock, this news had shorts covering throughout the day today, and the stock finished up +15% on the day.
For the Dow, heavy machinery manufacturer Caterpillar (CAT - Free Report) gained +2.5% on the day and Intel (INTC - Free Report) was up +2.1%. No fewer than 12 of the 30 stocks on this index were up at least +1% on the session, including Travelers (TRV - Free Report) , Nike (NKE - Free Report) and Goldman Sachs (GS - Free Report) . Favorable sentiment toward financial institutions off a pretty low base are helping these stocks outperform the market.
However, FedEx (FDX - Free Report) shares are sliding -6.5% at this hour, following its fiscal Q2 report that saw misses on both top and bottom lines — earnings of $3.99 per share was beneath the $4.14 expected, on revenues of $22.2 billion, coming up short of the $22.33 billion in the Zacks consensus. Full-year earnings estimates are fairly steady with the company’s early iteration — between $17-18.50 per share; analysts had been expecting $18.19 per share.
FedEx’s Express margins missed pretty considerably, bringing in just +1.7% for the quarter — less than half the +3.6% analysts were looking for. The company cited an “uncertain demand environment,” and when you are one of the companies that delivers goods to both enterprises and individuals on a wide, vast scale, this may be something of an economic red-flag going up heading into the second half of the company’s fiscal year.
Tomorrow morning, we’ll get an early look at the Q3 U.S. Current Account, Existing Home Sales for November and Consumer Confidence for December. Normally, none of these metrics would be enough on their own — or even lumped together — to trip up a bull market like we’ve seen over the past week; if we are to see a cooling down of trading, it may have more to do with rising valuation levels here in the final trading weeks of the year.
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