Stock Market Update

[BRIEFING.COM] The S&P 500 (+0.4%), Nasdaq Composite (+0.5%), and DJIA (+0.3%) are now sporting nice gains, though action remains choppy following a hectic morning of economic data and the Supreme Court's ruling against President Trump's IEEPA tariffs. 

In Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's dissent, he says, "The Court says nothing today about whether, and if so, how the government should go about returning the billions of dollars that it has collected from importers." Import-heavy stocks are among the early outperformers in response to the ruling.

New home sales declined 1.7% month-over-month in December to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 745,000 units (Briefing.com consensus: 714,000) versus 758,000 units in November. On a year-over-year basis, new home sales were up 3.8%.

The key takeaway from the report is that the weakest growth was concentrated in the nation's largest new home market--the South--underscoring the prevailing weakness in the housing market that has coincided with affordability constraints driven by higher prices and higher mortgage rates.

The final University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment reading for February decreased to 56.6 (Briefing.com consensus: 57.3) from the preliminary reading of 57.3. The final reading for January was 56.4. In the same period a year ago, the index stood at 64.7.

The key takeaway from the report is that there were stark differences in sentiment among consumers with stock holdings (large increase in sentiment) and consumers without stock holdings (a decline in sentiment).