Wall Street Momentum Stalls After Thursday's Rally, Palantir Jumps To 3-Year Highs, Bonds Rally: What's Driving Markets Friday?

Author: Piero Cingari | August 09, 2024 01:13pm

After a blistering Thursday that saw the S&P 500 close with its best session in nearly two years — up 2.3% — Wall Street’s price action turned sluggish on a Friday lacking market-moving economic events.

By midday in New York, major indices were slightly positive or hovering around the flat line, signaling a slowdown in the bullish sentiment compared to the previous session.

Since the beginning of the week, the S&P 500 is down 0.5%, with a few hours of trading left to determine whether the U.S. stock market can avoid closing in the red for the fourth consecutive week.

Meanwhile, there's a renewed demand for long-dated U.S. Treasury bonds, with yields declining by about 6 basis points on both the 10-year and 30-year notes. As a result, the popular iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (NASDAQ:TLT) rallied 1%, snapping a three-session losing streak.

The dollar slightly weakened, slipping 0.5% against the Japanese yen after three consecutive days of gains.

Traders now see nearly equal odds of a 50-basis-point or a 25-basis-point rate cut by the Federal Reserve in September, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tool.

In commodities, oil is up 0.7%, with West Texas Intermediate (WTI) light crude poised for its third consecutive session of gains.

Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) plunged 2% after rallying nearly 12%, marking its best-performing day since February 2022.

Friday’s Performance In Major US Indices, ETFs

Major Indices	Price	1-day %chg
S&P 500	5,329.24	0.2%
Nasdaq 100	18,426.22	0.1 %
Dow Jones	39,435.12	0.0%
Russell 2000	2,075.91	-0.5%

According to Benzinga Pro data:

• The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE:SPY) rose 0.2% to $531.66.
• The SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSE:DIA) was flat at $394.74.
• The tech-heavy Invesco QQQ Trust Series (NASDAQ:QQQ) inched 0.2% higher to $448.94.
• The iShares Russell 2000 ETF (NYSE:IWM) fell 0.5% to $205.88.
• The Health Care Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSE:XLV) outperformed, up by 0.4%. The Industrial Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSE:XLI) lagged, down by 0.2%.

Friday’s Stock Movers

• Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR) climbed 1.5%, building on the previous day’s 11% surge following the announcement of a partnership with Microsoft Corp. (NYSE:MSFT) to deliver advanced cloud, artificial intelligence, and analytics capabilities to U.S. defense and intelligence agencies. Shares of Palantir are on track to close at the highest level since February 2021.
• Eli Lilly & Co. (NYSE:LLY) surged over 6% after several investment banks raised their price targets, following a strong earnings report last quarter.
• Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) declined over 1% after revealing plans for thousands of job cuts, marking its second round of layoffs this year, as the company redirects its focus toward fast-growing sectors such as cybersecurity and artificial intelligence, Reuters reported.

Stocks reacting to company earnings are:

• Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:AKAM) up 10%,
• CarGurus, Inc. (NASDAQ:CARG) up 18%,
• Dropbox, Inc. (NASDAQ:DBX) up 2.3%,
• elf Beauty, Inc. (NYSE:ELF) down 15%,
• Evergy Inc. (NASDAQ:EVRG) down 0.7%,
• Expedia Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXPE) up 9%,
• Five9, Inc. (NASDAQ:FIVN) down 26%,
• Gilead Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:GILD) down 3%,
• Insulet Corporation (NASDAQ:PODD) down over 7%,
• New Fortress Energy Inc. (NASDAQ:NFE) down 26%,
• Paramount Global (NASDAQ:PARA) up 0.5%,
• Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTWO) up 2.5%,
• Trade Desk, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTD) up 9.7%,
• Unity Software Inc. (NYSE:U) up 11%,
• Yelp Inc. (NYSE:YELP) up 2.6%.

Read Now:

• Wall Street Shifts To ‘Bossing The Fed Into Big Rate Cuts’ After Bank Of Japan’s Policy U-Turn, Analyst Says

Photo: Shutterstock

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