U.S. stocks rallied in the final hour of trading on Monday as some investors interpreted the 10-year Treasury yield’s breach of 3% as a sign that the bond-market’s selloff may have exhausted itself for now.
What happened?
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA,
+0.26% finished with a gain of 84.29 points, or 0.3%, at 33,061.50, after falling 527 points at its session low. - The S&P 500 SPX,
+0.57% closed up by 23.45 points, or 0.6%, at 4,155.38. - The Nasdaq Composite COMP,
+1.63% finished up by 201.38 points, or 1.6%, at 12,536.02.
Stocks suffered a brutal April, with the Dow sinking 4.9%. The S&P 500 on Friday entered its second market correction of 2022, leaving it with an 8.8% monthly decline. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 13.3% last month. It was the worst April performance for the Dow and S&P 500 since 1970, and the Nasdaq’s worst for that month since 2000.
What drove markets
Stocks rallied in the final hour of trading, as yields for Treasury maturities from 5 to 30 years out closed at or above 3% for the first time since Nov. 9, 2018, according to Dow Jones Market Data. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note BX:TMUBMUSD10Y jumped 11 basis points to 2.995%. Yields rise when investors are selling off government debt.
“For a lot of people, there was a little bit of an exhausted move with the bond-market selloff,” said Edward Moya, senior market analyst for the Americas at OANDA Corp. “When the 10-year broke through 3%, that signaled the bond-market selloff had hit its peak and probably won’t continue until we get beyond the Fed,” which releases its policy decision on Wednesday, he said via phone.
Investors are keenly focused on the Federal Reserve, which is expected to deliver its first half-point rate hike in almost 22 years. Traders of fed-funds futures also see an 86% likelihood that the Federal Reserve delivers a 75 basis point rate hike in June, up from 19% a month ago, based on the CME FedWatch Tool.
See: A half-point Fed rate hike seen already baked in the cake
Intense inflationary pressures, plus broad supply and labor bottlenecks, were reflected in the Institute for Supply Management’s index of U.S. manufacturing activity on Monday: That index fell 1.7 points to 55.4% in April and showed the industrial side of the economy grew at the slowest clip in 18 months. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had expected the index to rise to 57.8% from a one-and-a-half year low of 57.1% in March. Any number above 50%, nonetheless, still signifies growth.
“We got through soft U.S. economic data and we’re entering a period of calm where we will see stocks consolidate from here,” OANDA’s Moya said.
Read: Farewell TINA? Why stock-market investors can’t afford to ignore rising real yields.
Some attention was focused on data from China over the weekend that showed manufacturing activity dropped to a six-month low in April as lockdowns continued in Shanghai and other manufacturing hubs amid Covid-19 outbreaks.
Over the weekend, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. BRK.A,
Also read: At the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, Warren Buffett aims to assure shareholders
Which companies were in focus?
- European Union antitrust authorities have told Apple Inc. AAPL,
+0.20% that they have formed a preliminary view that it has abused its dominant position in markets for mobile wallets. Apple shares still closed up by 0.2%.
How did other assets fare?
- The ICE U.S. Dollar Index DXY,
-0.24% , a measure of the currency against a basket of six major rivals, was up 0.7%. - Oil futures ended higher. West Texas Intermediate crude for June delivery CLM22,
+0.20% settled at $105.17 a barrel, up 48 cents or 0.5%, on the New York Mercantile Exchange. - Gold GC00,
-0.05% finished with its worst daily loss in nearly two months, with futures shedding 2.5% to settle at $1,863.60 per ounce. - The Stoxx Europe 600 SXXP,
-1.46% closed down by 1.5%, while London markets were closed for the early May bank holiday. European equities were briefly rattled after a “flash crash” that appeared to hit Nordic markets hard. - Japan’s Nikkei 225 NIK,
-0.11% finished 0.1% lower on Monday. The Shanghai Composite SHCOMP,+2.41% and the Hang Seng Index HSI,-0.12% in Hong Kong were both closed for the Labor Day holiday.
—Barbara Kollmeyer and Steve Goldstein contributed to this article.
