Stocks End Mixed On Holiday-Shortened Session
4:06 pm Friday, November 25th, 2022
stock market ended this holiday-shortened session on a mixed note, but overall, things held up pretty well. The main indices showed nice resilience to selling efforts today amid below-average volume despite a decent sized loss in Apple (AAPL).
Earlier, Reuters reported that iPhone production in November is projected to be curtailed by at least 30% at the Foxconn facility due to worker unrest that stems from pay disputes and COVID concerns. On a related note, record high COVID cases have prompted more lockdown measures that have reportedly brought Beijing to a near standstill.
Coincidentally, China has announced new stimulus measures, including more credit support for property developers. The People’s Bank of China also announced a 25 basis point cut in the required reserve ratio for most banks, which will free roughly CNY500 bln of liquidity, starting December 5.
There wasn’t an outsized reaction to the latter news, although market participation was lacking per usual on the day after Thanksgiving as attention turned to other interests.
For consumers, the day after Thanksgiving usually equates to shopping Black Friday deals. This did not registered much in retail stocks, however, as evidenced by the SPDR S&P Retail ETF (XRT) closing with a 0.1% loss.
The lack of participation today was reflected S&P 500 sector performance. None of the 11 sectors moved more than 0.7% in either direction. The “biggest” move was made by the communication services sector (-0.7%), which was weighed down by Activision (ATVI). The company sold off on news that the FTC may file an antitrust lawsuit to block Microsoft’s (MSFT) acquisition of Activision.
On the flip side, the real estate (+0.6%) and utilities (+0.6%) sectors sat atop the leaderboard.
Treasury yields climbed off overnight lows today. The 10-yr note yield, which hit 3.65% overnight, sits at 3.71% now. The 2-yr note yield, which hit 4.43% overnight, sits at 4.48% now.
