USA Women's Olympic Water Polo Goalkeeper Ashleigh Johnson holds her gold medal as she poses for photos outside the New York Stock Exchange, before ringing the opening bell, Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2021. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
By Damian J. Troise and Alex Veiga
Stocks capped another wobbly day of trading on Wall Street with modest gains Tuesday, as financial and industrial companies helped lift the market, outweighing a pullback in technology stocks.
The S&P 500 recovered from an early slip and eked out a 0.1% gain, enough to eclipse the record high it set Friday. The majority of companies in the benchmark index made gains, but they were kept in check by technology companies, which have an outsized weight on the S&P 500.
Banks made some of the strongest gains as bond yields edged higher. Banks benefit from higher yields, which allow them to charge higher interest rates on loans. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 1.35% from 1.31% late Monday.
Oil prices pulled up after sliding most of the last week and into Monday. U.S. benchmark crude oil rose 2.7% and helped lift the S&P 500's energy sector to 1.7% gain. Exxon Mobil rose 1.7% and Chevron gained 1.8%.
The broader market remains choppy with investors in the midst of a relatively quiet week. The latest round of corporate earnings is nearly finished and there are only a few pieces of economic data expected.
“We think this is a growing market and a growing economy and there’s room for this market to move,” said Rob Haworth, senior investment strategy director at U.S. Bank Wealth Management. “But that growth story does have some risk to it.”
The S&P 500 gained 4.40 points to 4,436.75. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 162.82 points, or 0.5%, to 35,264.67. The blue-chip index also notched an all-time high.
The slide in technology stocks weighed on the tech-heavy Nasdaq, which lost 72.09 points, or 0.5%, to 14,788.09. Small company stocks rose. The Russell 2000 index gained 4.55 points, or 0.2%, to 2,239.36.
Wall Street is still trying to gauge the pace of economic growth amid new worries about the latest wave of COVID-19 from the more contagious delta variant. Parts of Japan, including Tokyo, the capital, remain under a state of emergency as surging numbers of infections put more COVID-19 patients in already overburdened hospitals.
Analysts have said that the pace of growth will likely continue to slow as the year rolls on, but the latest surge with the virus has raised more concerns about just how much. Investors could have a better sense of the virus' impact on the economy in the coming months as schools reopen from summer break and people try to get back to normal activities, Haworth said.
Inflation concerns and the Federal Reserve's future plans to ease up on its support for low interest rates also hangs over the markets.
Earnings season is wrapping up with several big names. Sysco surged 6.5% after the food distributor reported quarterly results that topped Wall Street's estimates.
Ebay will report its results on Wednesday and Walt Disney will report results on Thursday.
Kansas City Southern jumped 7.5% after Canadian Pacific raised its offer for the railroad operator, reigniting a bidding war with Canadian National.
Desmond Howard, former NFL wide receiver and Modelo college football playoff ambassador, joins Cheddar News to talk about the Modelo sweepstakes honoring the 30th anniversary of his iconic punt return.
Satoshi Island is looking to become the world's first blockchain-driven economy. James Law, the chief architect of the planned private community, joined Cheddar to discuss the vision for the potential crypto capital of the world and how it will be brought to life. For people looking to live on the island, Law said they will be able to purchase land and homes and even design their own dwellings both in real life and via the metaverse. "Satoshi Island has already been digitally scanned. We have an absolute digital twin already in our metaverse," he said. Citizenship applications are expected to be launched via NFTs, he told Cheddar.
Satellite launch service Virgin Orbit has gone public on the Nasdaq via a SPAC merger with NextGen Acquisitions with a valuation of about $3.2 billion. CEO Dan Hart joined Cheddar's "Between Bells" from in front of his LauncherOne rocket in New York City's Times Square to talk about what's next after the IPO, an upcoming "Above the Clouds" mission to deliver commercial and national security payloads, and the benefits of their rockets being launched from commercial 747 aircraft. "We can launch anywhere in the world," he said. "There are almost 80 space agencies across the world, for instance, and about 10 of them have space launch. We can give them a space flight capability overnight by taking a runway and turning it into a spaceport."
CEO Tim Cook made a staggering $98.7 million in total compensation for 2021. The majority of Cook's earnings came from stocks along with his salary of $3 million. Apple recently became the first publicly traded U.S. company to have crossed the $3 trillion valuation mark.
Tech and entertainment giant Sony appears to be getting serious about automaking. An electric concept SUV — the Vision S-02 — was unveiled at CES 2022 and is slated to be produced by a new subdivision, Sony Mobility. This comes after the company revealed the Vision S concept Sedan at CES 2020.
According to the Labor Department December report, the U.S added 199,000 jobs as opposed to the more than 400,000 that had been expected. William M. Rodgers III, vice president and director of the Institute for Economic Equality at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, joined Cheddar's Baker Machado to talk about the state of the economy and noted that, despite the miss, the drop-off in the unemployment rate signaled to him that the economy is moving in the right direction. "There was an upward revision of about 100,000, a little more than 100,000, for the months of October and November, so, again, I'm not as worried or looking at this as negative as you all are," Rodgers added. He also noted the next three months would likely see slower growth due to the winter but stated that it would remain in a positive direction.
The New York Times has acquired sports outlet The Athletic in a $550 million deal. The acquisition brings the Times closer to its 10 million paid subscribers goal by 2025.
