Wall Street extends gains, closes at fresh record highs
Major equity indexes in the U.S. continued to push higher on Monday and refreshed their record highs as rising Treasury yields boosted the financials. Ahead of Wednesday's important FOMC meeting, the S&P Financials Index .SPSY added 0.5% on the day.
“There’s momentum in the market. There’s lots of cash. Even though the Fed’s about to reduce their balance sheet, you continue to have incredibly aggressive monetary policy. That continues to lead to money flowing into the market almost in an indiscriminate fashion,” Stephen Massocca, Senior Vice President at Wedbush Securities in San Francisco, told Reuters. Massocca further added that this prospect would weigh on rate-sensitive sectors such as utilities and real estate.
On the other hand, tech-giant Amazon officially announced a per-second billing system for its server services, losing more than 1% and dragging other big technology stocks such as Microsoft and Google with it. "Effective October 2nd, usage of Linux instances that are launched in On-Demand, Reserved, and Spot form will be billed in one-second increment," Amazon said in a statement and this move was assessed as a factor that would negatively impact the company's profitability. Nonetheless, the S&P Information Technology Index .SPLRCT closed the day flat amid a late recovery.
At the end of the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 63.31 points, or 0.28%, higher at 22,331.65, the S&P 500 added 3.53 points, or 0.14%, to 2,503.76 and the Nasdaq Composite gained 5.2 points, or 0.08%, to 6,453.67.
Headlines from the U.S. session:
- The storms might wreck Fed’s balance sheet plans - ING
- G10's key events scheduled for this week - UOB
- Fed’s dot plot likely to go through a downgrade - ING
- US: Homebuilder confidence declines slightly in September - Wells Fargo
- USTR Lighthizer: Trade agreement with UK 'a year or two' away - Reuters
- US Dollar rebounds to 91.70, daily highs
- Why this Fed meeting won’t be a non-event - ING
- WTI upside capped near $51.00
- US: President may make a large number of Fed appointments over the next year - NAB