Stock Market Update

[BRIEFING.COM] Today's trade has been lackluster thus far. The S&P 500 (+0.1%), Nasdaq Composite (+0.3%), and Dow Jones Industrial Average (-0.2%) have traded slightly higher or slightly lower than their record closing highs yesterday while the Russell 2000 underperform, trading 0.7% lower.

There's not a big a rush to sell, but there's also not a lot of enthusiasm on the part of buyers in the equity market. Meanwhile, the cryptocurrency market has shown enthusiasm today, leading Bitcoin to move above $100,000. It is one of the only areas of the market making an outsized move in either direction.

Chipmakers and semiconductor equipment companies are another sector making outsized moves. The PHLX Semiconductor Index (SOX) is 1.3% lower with nearly every component trading down. NVIDIA (NVDA 145.63, +0.47, +0.3%) and Broadcom (AVGO 170.76, +0.20, +0.1%) have gone against the grain in the SOX, trading higher with no specific catalyst.

Other mega cap names trade in mixed fashion, contributing to the lackluster action at the index level. Gains in Tesla (TSLA 373.16, +15.23, +4.3%) and Amazon.com (AMZN 221.98, +3.83, +1.8%) have propelled the S&P 500 consumer discretionary sector to a 1.5% gain while losses in Meta Platforms (META 610.00, -3.66, -0.6%) and Alphabet (GOOG 175.23, -0.85, -0.5%) weigh down the communication services sector (-0.2%).

Separately, Treasury yields moved off intraday highs. The 10-yr yield, which moved above 4.22% earlier, sits at 4.18% now. The 2-yr yield moved from 4.17% to 4.16%.

Reviewing today's economic data:

• Weekly Initial Claims 224K (Briefing.com consensus 213K); Prior was revised to 215K from 213K, Weekly Continuing Claims 1.871 mln; Prior was revised to 1.896 mln from 1.907 mln
  • The key takeaway from the report is that the totality of the report isn't signaling any major changes with respect to labor market trends, which have connoted some softening but no real breakage on the employment front.
• October Trade Balance -$73.8 bln (Briefing.com consensus -$75.1 bln); Prior was revised to -$83.8 bln from -$84.4 bln
  • The key takeaway from the report is that it reflects overall weakness in global trade activity in October.