Wednesday’s Top Reads
Here are the top stories to read during Wednesday trading:
Latest Updates
With less than three weeks to go before the Nov. 5 election, investors are holding onto the likelihood that neither major political party takes total control of both White House and Congress.
Markets participants “are more comfortable with split control because it maintains the status quo,” said Eve Lando, portfolio manager at Santa Fe, N.M.-based Thornburg Investment Management, which has $47 billion in client assets. Her comments were on the impact the election could have on the municipal bond market.
“A Republican or Democratic president who begins their term with a split Congress reduces the likelihood of bipartisan agreements,” Lando wrote in an email on Wednesday.
Also on Wednesday, UBS Global Wealth Management’s chief investment office said it is putting a 45% probability on a presidential election win by Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, along with victories for Republicans in the Senate and Democrats in the House of Representatives. That scenario ranks as the most likely outcome seen by the UBS office.
The Dow Jones Transportation Average is surging 1.9% in recent trading, to outperform its sister index, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, by a wide margin, to put it on track to close at the highest price since July 31, 2023.
Keep in mind that the Dow transports hasn’t closed at a record since the Nov. 2, 2021 close of 17,039.38, while the Dow industrials closed at a record 43,065.22 two days ago.
United’s stock has run up 15.3% this week, and was headed for an 11th straight weekly gain. That’s way past the previous record of eight-straight weekly gains, which ended the week through Jan. 12, 2018.
Bond investors — who have sent spreads on the debt of the big U.S. money-center banks to their tightest levels of the year — are now positioning for new issuance, with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley both tapping the high-grade debt market on Wednesday.
The moves come a day after JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised $8 billion in a four-part deal.
Bond investors position for new debt from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley
Bond investors — who have sent spreads on the debt of the big U.S. money-center banks to their tightest levels of the year — are now positioning for new issuance, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley both tapping the high-grade debt market on Wednesday.
Amazon.com Inc.’s latest deal for nuclear power is giving a fresh boost to nuclear stocks that have been some of the best performers of 2024.
The retail giant struck a deal that will lead to the construction of four advanced small modular reactors, or SMRs, in Washington state. Google also struck an SMR arrangement earlier in the week, continuing Big Tech’s embrace of nuclear power. At the same time, these latest agreements are a departure of sorts from prior ones between large cloud companies and energy providers, as those other prominent ones involved existing reactors.
That Amazon is turning to new SMRs is proving a catalyst for shares of Oklo Inc., up 38%, and Nuscale Power Corp., up 31%, which make SMR technology and are the top two performers on the New York Stock Exchange for Wednesday. Shares of established independent power producers that have nuclear footprints are also up strongly, though to far lesser degrees, with Vistra Corp.’s stock up 5%, in one example.
The Global X Uranium ETF is up about 6%.
(Getty Images)
Bitcoin rose 0.9% on Wednesday to around $67,587, after recording back-to-back gains, as users on crypto prediction platform Polymarket are betting on a 59% chance that Donald Trump, who is viewed as a more friendly candidate towards crypto, will win the U.S. presidential election in November.
The largest cryptocurrency reached as high as $68,390 on Wednesday, rising above $68,000 for the first time since July. Bitcoin is up more than 60% year to date, while it is 7.3% away from its record high at $73,798 reached in March.
Major U.S. stock indexes moved mostly higher as of Wednesday afternoon with investors responding favorably to strong earnings reports from Morgan Stanley and United Airlines.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 236 points, or 0.6%, at 42,976.
The S&P 500 was up 8 points, or 0.1%, at 5,824.
The Nasdaq Composite was down 23 points, or 0.1%, at 18,293.
All three indexes had finished lower on Tuesday.
The Russell 2000 small-cap stock index continued to climb toward its highest level in years on Wednesday, helped by continued confidence that the Federal Reserve will be able to orchestrate a soft landing for the U.S. economy.
The index was up 1.6% at around 2,286 in New York morning trading and appeared to be on pace to surpass its 52-week closing high of 2,263.67 reached on July 16. It was also headed toward its highest closing level since Nov. 24, 2021, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
One exchange-traded fund tracking global airline operators and manufacturers is heading for its highest close in over a year on Wednesday.
The U.S. Global Jets ETF was surging 3.4% to trade at $22.04 as of 11:40 a.m. Eastern time, on track for its highest close since July 11, 2023, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
Morgan Stanley’s stock was surging 7.4% in recent trading toward a record high and its biggest gain in four years in the wake of a big earnings beat.
The gain was enough to lead the Financial Select Sector SPDR ETF’s gainers, as that ETF (XLF) also rallied into record territory, with 63 of 72 equity components gaining ground.
Morgan Stanley’s stock was up 9.1% so far this week, which puts it on track for a sixth straight weekly gain. That would be the longest such streak since the six-week stretch that snapped at the week ending Aug. 13, 2021.
U.S. stocks were mostly higher on Wednesday morning, but a continued selloff in some of the megacap technology names was limiting the upside for the broader market.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was rising nearly 200 points, or 0.4%, to around 42,930 as of 11:15 a.m. Eastern time, lifted by a 2.8% advance in shares of UnitedHealth Group Inc. and a 2.5% increase in Cisco Systems Inc. Shares of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. were also surging 1.8%, according to FactSet data.
The S&P 500 was up 0.1%, at 5,828, but its tech-heavy consumer-discretionary and information-technology sectors were losing over 0.1% each.
The Nasdaq Composite was struggling between gains and losses to trade at 18,317. The Nasdaq 100 index was off 0.2%, according to FactSet data.
