Both S&P 500 and Nasdaq also ended off the day’s lows, but while the S&P 500 ended little changed, the Nasdaq ended below the flat line for the second day running. The tech-heavy index has now declined in four out of the last five trading sessions.
Investors continued to rotate out of tech names into old economy stocks as barring Nvidia and Microsoft, all other big tech stocks ended with losses between 1% and 3%. Nearly all banking names such as Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, American Express, Bank of America ended at record high levels on Wednesday.The US House of Representatives will put the bill to end the longest government shutdown in history to vote in just a few minutes from now. Markets have been buoyed by the fact that the resumption of government activities will prompt the release of important macro data that has been put on hold due to the shutdown, thereby providing the Federal Reserve with the necessary data to cut interest rates during next month’s policy meeting.
However, the White House on Wednesday indicated that the October jobs report and the CPI data may never get reported as the survey collection process could not be completed. However, there has been no clarity on this from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) who compiles this data. There is also no clarity on any potential data release schedule, in case the government reopens.
The US Dollar index continues to hover around the mark of 100, while Gold prices are back above $4,200 an ounce in the futures market on hopes of more easing by the US Fed.
