(New York) The New York Stock Exchange traded slightly in the green on Tuesday, after the S&P 500 index hit the previous day, its 69e of the year, in a weak market which accentuates volatility.
At 3 p.m. GMT, the Dow Jones index was up 0.43%, the tech-dominant NASDAQ was 0.05% and the S&P 500 was up 0.22%.
The day before, the Dow Jones index had gained 0.98% to 36,302.38 points. The NASDAQ advanced 1.39% to 15,871.26 points while the S&P 500, also up 1.39%, posted a second straight record at 4,791.19 points.
Despite increased volatility due to low volume of trade, Wall Street seemed well on its way to celebrating “the recovery of Santa Claus” as stock marketers traditionally call this last week of the year, which is almost always positive for the market.
“Historically, over the last five days of the year, the S&P 500 has been up 80% of the time since 1928,” according to analysts at Wells Fargo.
Investors greeted with relief the measures announced by U.S. health officials (CDC) on Monday evening, cutting the recommended isolation period in half for infected Americans.
“The market trend is positive as the CDC recommends reducing the quarantine to five days instead of ten for people with COVID-19,” Briefing’s Patrick O’Hare noted.
“This will partially reduce staff shortages and fuel the market belief that the economic impact of the Omicron variant will be short-lived,” he added.
The CDC rule change “will draw attention to the airline industry which has suffered from numerous flight cancellations due to understaffing due to quarantines,” Schwab analysts said.
The titles of airlines that have been abused since the appearance of the Omicron variant, took a breath of fresh air such as Delta Airlines (+ 0.28%), American Airlines (+ 0.50%) or United Airlines (+0, 65%).
The eyes would remain focused on Apple (-0.56% to 179.29 dollars) which, after an increase of 2.30% Monday, could progress and reach the historic mark of 3000 billion dollars of capitalization.
As soon as the stock reaches $ 182.86, Apple will be the first company to reach this amount of capitalization.
The stock of the popular iPhone maker climbed 36% in 2021.
Other big names continued on the momentum of the day before such as Facebook (Meta + 1.61%), or Tesla (+ 0.72% to $ 1,101.92).
But the NASDAQ oscillated between positive and negative territory in the morning, Monday’s strong performance attracting profit-taking in the technology sector, particularly semiconductors.
Nine of the eleven sectors of the S&P were in the green except real estate and information technology as a whole.
One of the few indicators for this end-of-year week, the Case-Shiller property price index showed a slight slowdown in the rise in housing costs in October over one year.
The distribution sector continued its momentum, confident in the dynamism of the American consumer, like Target (+ 0.50%), Walmart (+ 0.57%) or the electronics chain Best Buy (0 , 57%).
In the bond market, yields on 10-year Treasury bills eased to 1.45% from 1.47% the day before.