Stock Market Update

[BRIEFING.COM] The equity market closed with gains in major indices. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite each closed 0.3% higher than Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.7%, and the Russell 2000 jumped 1.6%. 

Many stocks participated in upside moves following last week's index-level declines. Advancers led decliners by a roughly 2-to-1 margin at the NYSE and at the Nasdaq. The upside bias was in front of a busy week in terms of earnings news. 

Gains in some influential names that also report earnings this week were a support factor for the major indices today. Alphabet (GOOG 168.34, +1.35, +0.8%), which reports on Tuesday, Meta Platforms (META 578.16, +4.91, +0.9%), which reports on Wednesday, and Apple (AAPL 233.40, +1.99, +0.9%) and Amazon.com (AMZN 188.39, +0.56, +0.3%), which report on Thursday are standouts in that respect.

Microsoft (MSFT 426.59, -1.56, -0.4%) also reports results on Wednesday, but closed lower today. This price action, along with losses in NVIDIA (NVDA 140.52, -1.02, -0.7%) and Broadcom (AVGO 172.02, -0.98, -0.6%), led the information technology sector to close 0.1% lower. 

The only other sector to close with a loss was energy (-0.7%), which reacted to dropping oil prices. WTI crude oil futures slid 6.1% to $67.39/bbl after Israel's retaliation against Iran was limited to military targets, sparing oil and nuclear facilities. 

Stocks maintained an upside bias through the entire session despite rising Treasury yields. The 2-yr yield settled four basis points higher at 4.14% lower and the 10-yr yield settled five basis points higher at 4.28%. This followed a $69 bln 2-yr note auction, which met poor demand, and a $70 bln 5-yr note sale priced worse than expected, but featured decent internals.

• Nasdaq Composite: +23.7% YTD
• S&P 500: +22.1% YTD
• Dow Jones Industrial Average: +12.5% YTD
• S&P Midcap 400: +12.9% YTD
• Russell 2000: +10.7% YTD

There was no US economic data of note today. Tuesday's economic lineup features: 

• 9:00 ET: August FHFA Housing Price Index, August S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index
• 10:00 ET: October Consumer Confidence, September JOLTS - Job Openings