Stock Market Update

[BRIEFING.COM] Overall gains are modest today, yet there is some broad-based buying interest. That takeaway is rooted in breadth figures that favor advancers by a better than 2-to-1 margin at the NYSE and by a 13-to-7 margin at the Nasdaq, the outperformance of the Russell 2000 (+0.8%), and the advantage held by the equal-weighted S&P 500 (+0.4%) over the market cap-weighted S&P 500 (+0.3%).

There are eight S&P 500 sectors trading higher, including the health care sector (+0.9%) which is contending with the news that the Department of Health and Human Services has removed the 17 sitting members of the ACIP Committee, which makes recommendations on the safety, efficacy, and clinical need of vaccines to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and will replace them with new members currently under consideration.

Separately, the three sectors trading lower are the industrials (-0.7%), utilities (-0.4%), and financials (-0.1%) sectors.