4 min read
Everything rallied except tech
The Dow jumped 530 points on Tuesday and ten of eleven sectors rose. Tech was the one that didn't.
The Close The Dow rose 530 points, or 1.0%, to 52,496. The S&P 500 gained 0.3% to 7,713. The Nasdaq ended flat, down just 6 points. Small companies had the best day. The Russell 2000 jumped 1.7%. Oil helped too: Brent crude neared $112 in the morning, then fell back to $108.79.
Strong reports led the way. Equifax jumped 11.3% after its profit beat forecasts, even with high mortgage rates slowing part of its business. Hasbro rose 11.2%, as its Magic: The Gathering card game brought in more than $600 million in a single quarter for the first time. 3M gained 5.8% on a profit beat. Health care was the best sector, up 2.4%. Moderna rose 6.7%. Airlines got a lift from cheaper oil. But a good report wasn't always enough. General Motors fell 6.8% even though its profit beat forecasts and it announced a buyback of up to $20 billion. Its full-year profit forecast came in below what analysts wanted. GE Aerospace also fell 3.7% after its report. What The Market Is Pricing In Put Monday and Tuesday side by side. Monday, tech rose and eight sectors fell. Tuesday, tech fell and ten sectors rose. That's the market splitting its bets. Investors don't trust the AI stocks enough to pile back in, but they still like companies that are making money right now. Meta fell 1.6%, its third straight loss, the day before it reports. GM's drop teaches a useful phrase. When a stock has run up a lot, Wall Street says it's priced for perfection: the good news is already in the price, so even a beat can disappoint. Investors weren't selling the results. They were selling the outlook. Housing gave another warning. Builders started work on 1.22 million homes at a yearly pace in September, well below the 1.30 million economists expected. With the ten-year yield still above 5.1%, homes stay expensive to finance.
I've seen this before. After the November 2016 election, money poured out of big tech and into banks, factories and small companies. The Russell 2000 jumped about 11% that month, while the Nasdaq barely kept up. That shift ran hot for about a month, and then big tech took the lead again in 2017. How long this one lasts depends on tonight. Meta and Tesla report, and they either win back the AI believers or push more money into everything else. What's Next Three things I'm watching today and this week: 01 Big Tech Tonight Tesla, Meta, Lam Research, Texas Instruments and IBM all report today, Wednesday, October 21, after the close. Meta matters most: it has fallen three days in a row, and investors want to know how much more it plans to spend on AI. 02 Netflix Netflix reported after Tuesday's close. Profit came in at 87 cents a share, above the 82 cents analysts expected. But it cut its ad revenue forecast for the year to about $2.7 billion from about $3 billion, and the stock was down about 6% in late after-hours trading. Watch whether that drop holds today. 03 Oil Brent crude has swung between $97 and $112 this month. Tuesday showed what cheaper oil does: airlines and small companies rallied. If it climbs back toward $112, inflation worries return ahead of the Fed's October 27-28 meeting. Tech sat out. Everything else rallied. Tonight, Big Tech gets its chance to answer.
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