Stocks dropped from all-time highs as traders assessed corporate earnings and economic data showing potential inflation pressures. The dollar rose.
The S&P 500 pared its monthly gains. Twitter Inc. sank as the social media company posted a sluggish start to the year in its advertising business, while Amazon.com Inc. rallied on a jump in sales. Despite living up to Wall Street’s profit expectations, Chevron Corp. slid after disappointing investors who were anticipating a revival of buybacks.
Read: Big Oil Is Boosting ETF Returns and ESG Funds Are No Exception
Data Friday showed U.S. personal incomes soared in March by the most in monthly records back to 1946, powered by a third round of pandemic-relief checks. A key measure of consumer prices, known as the personal consumption expenditure price index, that the Federal Reserve officially uses for its target rose 2.3% in March from a year earlier, the biggest gain since 2018. Meanwhile, a gauge of consumer sentiment continued to strengthen in late April.
With the S&P 500 poised to end the first four months of 2021 with a rally of more than 10%, the adage of “sell in May and go away” may be on many investors’ minds. However, JPMorgan Chase & Co. strategists urged traders to get ready for a revival of the reflation trade as the economic reopening gathers pace in coming months. Credit Suisse Group AG’s Jonathan Golub raised his year-end forecast for the S&P 500, citing a “red-hot economy fueling earnings.”
“Are we at a point where there’s further upside to the market or are we at a point where we need to think about the cadence of returns going forward being more narrow or smaller?” said Ralph Bassett, head of North American equities at Aberdeen Standard Investments. “The setup is very good, but with multiples where they are, the upside risks are just really becoming less likely at this stage.”
Technology stocks are poised to gain support from relatively stable yields for U.S. inflation-indexed debt, according to Andrew Garthwaite, a global strategist at Credit Suisse Group AG. He compared a relative-strength gauge for the group with the yield on 10-year Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, or TIPS, in a report Thursday. The S&P 500 Information Technology Index’s ratio to the benchmark gauge of American equities set this year’s low in March, and then climbed as demand for the debt caused yields to fall.
“We do not expect a meaningful rise in the TIPS yield,” Garthwaite wrote, citing U.S. monetary policy and other influences.
For updates and commentary on the markets see the MLIV <GO> blog.
These are some of the main moves in markets:
Stocks
- The S&P 500 fell 0.7% as of 11:01 a.m. New York time
- The Nasdaq 100 fell 0.5%
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.7%
- The Stoxx Europe 600 was little changed
- The MSCI World index fell 0.8%
Currencies
- The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index rose 0.6%
- The euro fell 0.7% to $1.2037
- The British pound fell 0.7% to $1.3844
- The Japanese yen fell 0.4% to 109.33 per dollar
Bonds
- The yield on 10-year Treasuries was little changed at 1.63%
- Germany’s 10-year yield was little changed at -0.20%
- Britain’s 10-year yield was little changed at 0.84%
Commodities
- West Texas Intermediate crude fell 2.6% to $63 a barrel
- Gold futures rose 0.1% to $1,771 an ounce
— With assistance by Maria Tadeo, Emily Barrett, Srinivasan Sivabalan, Cecile Gutscher, and Claire Ballentine