Updated: 11-Sept-20
A weekly recap of market activity and events, featuring commentary, analysis written with individual investors in mind.
Week in perspective provided by Briefing.com. Briefing.com offers live market analysis on their web site www.Briefing.com
The selling from the prior week carried over to this shortened trading week. The S&P 500 fell 2.5%, the Nasdaq Composite fell 4.1%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.7%, and the Russell 2000 fell 2.5%.
The energy sector dropped 6.4% amid weakening oil prices ($37.34/bbl, -2.36, -5.9%), but the biggest weights on the market were the information technology (-4.4%), communication services (-3.4%), and financials (-2.4%) sectors. Only the materials sector (+0.8%) finished higher for its second straight weekly gain.
This week's selling was described as technically-oriented. Though there several negative-sounding developments that may have restrained risk sentiment, they ultimately appeared to be good excuses for the market, especially the mega-caps, to extend last week's cooling-off period.
Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), Alphabet (GOOG), and Facebook (FB) fell between 4.4% and 7.4%. Tesla (TSLA) fell 10.9% and was snubbed a spot in the S&P 500 by the index committee.
As for the negative-sounding headlines, the Senate failed to pass its $300 billion coronavirus relief bill, AstraZeneca (AZN) paused its COVID-19 vaccine trial in the UK due to a serious adverse reaction in a patient, President Trump suggested disincentives for U.S. companies to outsource jobs to China, and China's largest semiconductor foundry could reportedly be added to a trade blacklist.
By week's end, the S&P 500 was down 7% from its record high and the Nasdaq was down 10% from its record high. A consolation for the bulls was that the S&P 500 finished above its 50-day moving average (3322). The Nasdaq did not, though.
U.S. Treasuries ended the week with modest gains. The 2-yr yield declined three basis points to 0.13%, and the 10-yr yield declined five basis points to 0.67%. The U.S. Dollar Index advanced 0.6% to 93.28.