Wall Street Close: S&P 500, Nasdaq refresh record top, Dow prints mild losses

US shares kick-start the week’s trading on a positive note, ex-DJI, as traders cheer Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s resistance for tapering and imminent rate hikes while staying optimistic over the economic rebound during Friday’s Jackson Hole Symposium speech.

The upbeat mood also took clues from softer US economics that favored the need for the Fed’s easy money policies. However, geopolitical challenges to the risk appetite and covid woes weigh on the market sentiment and probe the bulls ahead of the key US employment data.

That said, Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) bucks the uptrend with -0.16% daily loss, or 56.00 points of a downside, to 35,400. On the contrary, S&P 500 and Nasdaq refresh record tops to around 4,537 and 15,288 respectively before closing with 0.43% and 0.90% gains on a day.

Downbeat prints of the US Dallas Fed Manufacturing Business Index for August and Pending Home Sales for July back the need for easy money policy, backing Powell’s resistance in announcing details of tapering, not to forget suggesting a gap between taper and rate hike.

Elsewhere, the US withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and hurricane Ida join the Sino–American tussles to portray geopolitical challenges to market players’ moods.

It’s worth noting that oil prices benefit from hurricane Ida and expectations that the easy money policies are here to stay, at least for now. However, gold prices eased above $1,800 as the US Dollar Index (DXY) rebounds from the lowest level since August 16.

With the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) investigating Boeing 777 engine fix after the Denver incident, prices of shares dropped around 2.0% and weigh on DJI. Alternatively, shares of technology leaders like Facebook, Google parent Alphabet, Netflix, Apple and Microsoft all managed to propel Nasdaq towards a fresh all-time high. Also favoring the technology stocks could be the downbeat US Treasury yields, which recently dropped 3.2 basis points (bps) to 1.28%.

Apple’s acquisition of Primephonic and chatters over PayPal’s search for the stock-trading platform for its US customers were extra news that entertained traders on the Street.

Moving on, the second-tier US data and headlines concerning covid, Afghanistan and hurricane Ida may offer intermediate moves to the market players ahead of Friday’s US Nonfarm Payrolls (NFP).