The New York Stock Exchange will reopen its trading floor to “a subset” of floor brokers on May 26, with new safety measures, announced Stacey Cunningham, the exchange’s president, in a guest column in The Wall Street Journal published Thursday afternoon.
The NYSE has been limited to electronic trading since closing the trading floor in response to the COVID-19 pandemic on March 23.
“We opted to close our floor temporarily in the early days of the pandemic to help slow the spread of disease. Two months later, we’ve learned a lot and are in a position to reopen the floor with vital new safety measures, as we begin working together to restart the U.S. economy.” Cunningham wrote.
Tech Chart Time
A number of textbook “bearish engulfing” reversal patterns have appeared in the stock charts of large-capitalization technology companies to suggest the momentum in the tech sector may have swung from bulls to bears.
There are other technical warning signals that warn investors to beware buying on a dip, at least in the short term.
For candlestick chart followers, a bearish engulfing is a two-day pattern that starts with a new closing high for a recent uptrend. The next day starts with a gap higher at the open to a new high, before an intraday reversal to close below the previous day’s open.
The patterns suggest a buying climax may have occurred that marks a reversal in a trend. And a number of textbook patterns appeared Tuesday, including the charts of the Nasdaq-100, Microsoft Corp., Alphabet Inc. and Facebook Inc. to suggest a short-term reversal is likely.
For example, the Nasdaq-100, which includes the most highly valued stocks listed on the Nasdaq exchange, and carries a 56.7% weighting for technology, reached an intraday high of 9,346.27 on Monday before closing at a near 3-month high of 9,298.92. The intraday low was 9,155.21.
On Tuesday, the index opened at 9,326.06, then rose to a 3-month intraday high of 9,354.45 before pulling a sharp U-turn to close down 2.0% at 9,112.45. Basically, Tuesday’s trading completely engulfed Monday’s trading range, in a bearish way.
The reversal pattern comes as large-cap tech outperformed the broader stock market’s bounce off the COVID-19-related lows in March.
The Nasdaq-100 has soared 29% since closing at a 9-month low of 6,994.29 on March 20, while the S&P 500 index has climbed 26% off its 3+-year low of 2,237.40 on March 23 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has advanced 25%.
Week Wrap Up
The Dow staged the biggest turnaround in about two months on Thursday, as investors overlooked data that showed 2.9 million Americans lost jobs last week, bringing the total unemployed to about 36.5 million since COVID-19 pandemic began.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was about 377.37 points, or 1.6%, higher at around 23,625.34, helped by gains in American Express Co. and UnitedHealth Group Inc. The blue-chip index shook off a roughly 460-point slide in the early part of the session to an intraday low at 22,789.62, with the close higher marking its biggest turnaround since March 19, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
Meanwhile, the S&P 500 index rose 32,50 points, or 1.2%, at 2,852.50, after touching an intraday low at 2,766.64, helped by a 2.6% rally in financials and a 1.3% rally in consumer-discretionary names helping to lead the charge higher. The Nasdaq Composite Index closed 0.9% higher, gaining 80.55 points, to end at 8,943.72.
On Wednesday, the Dow slumped 516.81 points, or 2.2%, to finish at 23,247.97, while the S&P 500 gave up 50.12 points, or 1.8%, to close at 2,820. The Nasdaq Composite slumped 139.38 points, or 1.6%, ending at 8,863.17.
A rebound in large financial stocks helped to turn stocks around in afternoon action, as investor skittishness abated with signs of recovering demand as some U.S. states reopen their economies.
“Financials led the rally,” J.J. Kinahan, chief market strategist for TD Ameritrade told MarketWatch, adding the banks have been a battered sector as investors worry about the economy and the possibility of negative interest rates, which can undercut a bank’s business model.