Stocks maintain gains after whipsawing as traders digest war updates
Stocks rose for the fourth consecutive session as traders vacillated between hopes for a ceasefire and fears of an escalation.
The S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Russell 2000 managed to maintain gains, and oil rose amid a volatile session. Traders vacillated between hopes for a ceasefire and fears of an escalation after President Trump said the entire country of Iran could be taken out in one night, “maybe tomorrow.”
Friday’s jobs report showed that US hiring surged in March, as job growth of 178,000 crushed estimates of 65,000, and the unemployment rate unexpectedly dipped to 4.3%, below the 4.4% expected by economists.
This was statistically the most boring trading day in US stocks since the war began.
The daily range in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF as a share of the previous session’s closing price was just 64 basis points. That’s the least volatile intraday action since February 25 — before the US-Israeli strikes on Iran.
Consumer discretionary was the best-performing sector, while utilities fared the worst.
Bitcoin managed to cross $70,000 for the first time in April, but couldn’t maintain the level.
Stocks that moved higher:
Theater chain AMC spiked after Nintendo’s “Super Mario Galaxy Movie” delivered holiday weekend records.
Memory stocks Seagate Technology Holdings, Micron, Western Digital, and Sandisk climbed as momentum returned and fears over Google’s TurboQuant algorithm dissipated.
AppLovin surged as Wells Fargo boosted its price target to $560 from $543.
Applied Optoelectronics jumped after a hyperscaler upped its purchase order by $71 million.
Ethereum treasury firm BitMine Immersion Technologies rose as gains in ethereum outpaced the wider crypto industry. The company also said it’s been approved for uplisting to the New York Stock Exchange and will begin trading on the NYSE later this week.
BNY and Robinhood ticked higher after being tapped by the Treasury department to run “Trump accounts” for children. (Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company.)
Stocks that moved lower:
Lucid fell after saying Q1 deliveries of the Lucid Gravity were disrupted due to a supplier quality issue.
Roblox dropped as Wells Fargo lowered its price target on the stock to $78 from $97.
Petrochemicals stocks LyondellBasell and Dow, Inc. dipped after Bank of America downgraded the stocks to “underperform” from “neutral,” saying tailwinds from Mideast war are unsustainable.
