Wall Street was poised to open lower on Monday, giving back some gains following a session in which major benchmarks were spurred higher by encouraging inflation data.
The week will be mostly quiet until Friday, when the March jobs report is released. The data are expected to show the economy created a whopping 630,00 jobs — the most since October 2019 and the best the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Friday, the S&P 500, Dow and Nasdaq closed higher by more than 1%, with the broader market posting its best in three weeks. However, traders were watching several big stocks like Viacom (VIA) and Discovery (DISC), after a volatile session on Friday saw several take a hit linked to liquidation by Bill Hwang, a fund manager and the ex-head of Tiger Management’s family office.
Bloomberg News reported that Hwang’s firm, Archegos Capital Management, was forced by its banks to sell more than $20 billion worth of shares after some positions moved against him. In a related move, Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse (CS) warned that the volatility stemming from the firm’s liquidation would force the bank to take a “highly significant” hit to its first quarter results.
Markets were largely calm amid news that the massive ship marooned in the Suez Canal had been partly re-floated, which should pave the way for ending the blockage that’s created a shipping traffic jam in one of the world’s most important shipping lanes. Efforts there had put upward pressure on oil and natural gas prices, given that the canal is a busy thoroughfare for energy exports.
The past couple weeks have been marked by choppy equity trading, especially heading into some of the final sessions of the first quarter. But overall, the cyclical energy, financials and industrials sectors – or the biggest under-performers of 2020 – have outperformed strongly for the year-to-date, while last year’s leading technology companies have lagged. Signs of improving economic growth have trickled in, with Thursday’s bigger-than-expected drop in new unemployment claims to a pandemic-era low among the latest positive reports.
A prevailing concern for many investors, however, has in fact been centered on the pace of economic expansion, and whether the stimulus-aided post-pandemic recovery might barrel forward even more vigorously than expected and stir up rapid inflation. In the wake of passing a $2 trillion stimulus package, the Biden administration is gearing up for even more spending — and the likelihood of higher taxes.
“You can be sure the spending with have a multiplier less than zero and tax increases are always an economic drag with the extent the only difference,” noted Peter Boockvar, Chief Investment Officer at Bleakley Advisory Group.
Still, Federal Reserve policymakers have recently tried to assuage market participants’ fears over a sharp rise in inflation. On NPR’s Morning…
Read More: Stocks dip as market takes a breather before jobs data; Suez ship partly