Stocks down, but billionaires increased their net worth by $434 billion

Stocks pulled back today.

With the S&P up more than 3.0% this week we were due for a pullback.

But lingering tensions between the U.S. and China were also a factor.

Index futures were lower overnight ahead of today’s weekly Unemployment Claims release.

And the report was slightly worse than expected numbers with 2.438 million people filing for unemployment last week (the forecast was 2.4 million). This brings the total number of filings to 38 million during the pandemic with 25 million continuing claims (a record).

Index futures were higher after the report, and stocks rallied after the open. Then after 15 minutes of trading stocks were at session highs.

Trading was choppy for the next 45 minutes of trading then stocks slide lower. After the slide there was a small bounce during lunch, then stocks were pretty much sideways from then on into the close.

Here’s where the major indices ended the day:

• The S&P finished with an 0.8% loss. Down 23 points, the S&P ended at 2,949.
• The DOW ended 0.4% lower. Dropping 102 points the DOW closed at 24,474.
• The NASDAQ was down 1.0%. With an 89 point loss the NASDAQ finished at 9,287.

Crude Oil (CL) finished higher for the 6th day in a row. Up 1.3%, Crude Oil ended at $33.92.

After closing at record highs yesterday, Amazon (AMZN) rallied to new records this morning. But Amazon couldn’t hang onto the early gains and ended the day with a 2.1% loss.

Facebook (FB) CEO Mark Zuckerberg is embracing the “work from home” movement. 95% of Facebook employees are working remotely because of COVID-19. And Zuck predicts that 50% of Facebook’s employees will work remotely in the next 5-10 years. Facebook ended the day with a 0.6% gain.

Speaking of billionaires…

While the nation was locked down, U.S. billionaires saw their net worth increase by $434 billion (between mid-March and mid-April).

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos saw the biggest gains, adding $25 billion and $34.6 billion respectively.