Stock Market Update

[BRIEFING.COM] The stock market faced some selling pressure today after six straight weeks of gains for the S&P 500 (-0.2%). The index closed at a record high on Friday, along with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (-0.8%), so today's downside bias was related in part to normal consolidation activity.

Selling in the stock market was also a function of rising market rates. The 10-yr yield settled 11 basis points higher at 4.18% and the 2-yr yield settled seven basis points higher at 4.02%. 

The Nasdaq Composite outperformed other major indices, climbing 0.3% compared to Friday's close thanks to gains in some mega cap names. NVIDIA (NVDA 143.71, +5.71, +4.1%), Microsoft (MSFT 418.78, +0.62, +0.2%), and Apple (AAPL 236.48, +1.48, +0.6%) were among the influential winners from the space. 

Many other stocks participated in today's retreat. 23 of the 30 Dow components fell and ten of the 11 S&P 500 sectors declined. The information technology sector (+0.9%) was alone in positive territory, boosted by its heavily-weighted components, while the rate-sensitive real estate sector (-2.1%) logged the largest decline by a decent margin.

The health care sector (-1.2%) was the next worst performer, clipped by a sizable decline in shares of Cigna (CI 320.23, -15.77, -4.7%) following a Bloomberg report that it was in talks to takeover Humana (HUM 260.57, -6.57, -2.5%).

The negative action in equities also reflected a wait-and-see mentality in front of a busy week of earnings. Tesla (TSLA 218.85, -1.85, -0.8%), Boeing (BA 159.82, +4.82, +3.1%), and UPS (UPS 131.33, -4.60, -3.4%) are some of the headliners on the earnings calendar. 

• Nasdaq Composite: +23.5% YTD
• S&P 500: +22.7% YTD
• Dow Jones Industrial Average: +13.9% YTD
• S&P Midcap 400: +13.6% YTD
• Russell 2000: +10.5% YTD

Reviewing today's economic data:

• September Leading Indicators -0.5% (Briefing.com consensus -0.3%); Prior was revised to -0.3% from -0.2%

There's no US economic data of note on Tuesday.