- Title: Wall St advances, pushing S&P 500 to 50th record high close this year
- Date: 24th August 2021
- Summary: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (AUGUST 24, 2021) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) SYSTEMATIC VENTURES, CEO, MAX WOLFF, SAYING: "It feels like a mercurial response to the most recent news about Delta variant and or COVID writ large, although I would say the market trades up more than it trades down on the COVID news. So it seems to be a sort of upside skewed interpretation to the world of COVID. We got some pretty good numbers though. Again, I think they're kind of backward looking for the last quarter, but we've had a pretty steady drip of positive earnings news and the macroeconomic news has been pretty good. I think my only caution there would be that that's because it mostly looks at the period before we did anything about the evidence around Delta. And so my fear, which is pretty clearly clinically the case now, is that there is so much pressure and so much desire, very reasonable, to reopen the economy, that we kind of spent a little more than we probably had healthwise time ignoring Delta, now there's a little bit of a catch-up game being played. So my guess is, we're a little bit over the sustainable in terms of our idea of recovery. But I still think we're recovering, certainly from the first two quarters of 2020, which were just a sort of brutal drawdown in activity and sentiment." WHITE FLASH (SOUNDBITE) (English) SYSTEMATIC VENTURES, CEO, MAX WOLFF, SAYING: "People are trying to figure out if this is the sort of last Jackson Hole or not for Mr. Powell. So if Chairman Powell is not going to be back, that's a certain amount of uncertainty. If the infrastructure bill isn't going to go through, that's a certain amount of uncertainty. If there's some worries about Delta and other variants, that's a certain amount of uncertainty. I just feel like the Fed's not going to want to do this, which is a hard thing to do anyway. They're not going to want to tug this Band-Aid off. And so if there are good excuses to keep the Band-Aid on through another shower cycle or two, I think they might. So I think markets might not get that signal."
- Embargoed: 7th September 2021 21:09
- Keywords: COVID-19 shot Fed Nasdaq Pfizer Powell U.S. approval Wall Street technology stocks
- Location: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES
- City: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES
- Country: USA
- Topics: Economic Events,Equities Markets,United States
- Reuters ID: LVA002ERN475Z
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Wall Street ended higher in a late-summer, light volume rally on Tuesday (August 24) as the FDA's full approval of a COVID-19 vaccine on Monday (August 23) and the absence of negative catalysts kept risk appetite alive ahead of the much-anticipated Jackson Hole Symposium.
All three major U.S. stock indexes advanced higher, with the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq closing at all-time closing highs.
The session marked the S&P 500's 50th record high close so far this year, and only in 1964 and 1995 had the index reached that level by the end of August, as pointed out by Ryan Detrick, senior market strategist at LPL Financial in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Tech and tech-adjacent mega-caps were once again doing the heavy lifting, but economically sensitive cyclicals and small-caps outperformed the broader market.
The Food and Drug Administration's full approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on Monday fueled optimism over economic recovery which spilled into Tuesday's session.
Travel and leisure sectors, associated with economic re-engagement, enjoyed a healthy rally.
Recent economic indicators suggest the recovery from the most abrupt recession in U.S. history is headed in the right direction, but not to the extent that is likely to prompt the Fed to tighten its dovish monetary policy.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell is due to meet with other world bank leaders when the Jackson Hole Symposium convenes later this week, and his remarks will be closely parsed for any clues regarding the Fed's tapering of asset purchases and hiking key interest rates.
The event will take place virtually and not in person due to the spread of COVID-19 in the county, which has reduced expectations that any major announcement will be made at the event.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 30.55 points, or 0.086%, to 35,366.26, the S&P 500 gained 6.70 points, or 0.15%, to 4,486.23 and the Nasdaq Composite added 77.15 points, or 0.52%, to 15,019.80.
(Production: Hyeongmi Kim, Roselle Chen, Fred Katayama) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
- Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2021. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
- Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
