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Posted March 03, 2021

Sean Ring

By Sean Ring

Choppy Waters in Today’s Market

Welcome back to the Rude Awakening for Wednesday, March 3, 2021.

We have another important update on the results of our asymmetric trading approach…

We’ll get into that today!

Lots of activity coming into today’s marketplace on the earnings front.

Some good, some bad…

But for a brief rundown, here’s what we’re looking at…

“Stocks trade mixed as bond yields resurge”

Yahoo Finance reports…

Stocks traded choppily on Wednesday after sliding a day earlier, as investors weighed optimism over widespread post-pandemic business reopenings against concerns over economic overheating.

The S&P 500 and Dow each fluctuated between small gains and losses just after market open, while Treasury yields resumed advancing across the curve. A disappointing report on private payrolls growth in February weighed on risk assets Wednesday morning, suggesting the labor market was still struggling to make headway amid the ongoing pandemic.

The Nasdaq hugged the flat line after the index closed lower by 1.7% on Tuesday, with technology stocks lagging amid a rotation to cyclical shares poised to benefit from easing stay-in-place orders. Airlines, cruse lines and hotel stocks increased on Tuesday, and extended gains during early trading.

Elsewhere, shares of online mortgage provider Rocket Companies (RKT) pulled back during the pre-market session. The stock surged 71% to a record high on Tuesday and triggered a volatility halt after investors on Reddit appeared to target the heavily shorted stock as another short-squeeze candidate.

Investors this week have fixed their gaze on the next several months, when vaccine-enabled reopenings will help boost service-centric companies that had been heavily beaten down last year. President Joe Biden said that the U.S. now expects to have enough COVID-19 vaccines for all adults who want one by the end of May, pulling forward that target by two full months from the government's previous forecast. The drugmaker Merck (MRK) is set to help produce Johnson & Johnson's (JNJ) single-dose COVID-19 vaccine that was authorized over this past weekend, which would help speed the pace of inoculations in the U.S.

Plus, the U.S. Senate is debating the contours of another stimulus package worth up to $1.9 trillion this week, with congressional lawmakers racing to pass another relief bill before a mid-March cliff for federal unemployment benefits authorized under the last package.

The stimulus bill passing will be a big bulwark to the markets.

But as of now, we can expect to see a mixed bag of market activity.

It’s nice to have control over your trades…

Have a great rest of your trading day.

We’ll see you tomorrow!

Regards,

Scott Stewart

Scott Stewart
Editor, Rude Awakening

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