Weekly Market Commentary: S&P 500 and Dow march to record highs

Your Family CFO Team • October 25, 2021

The stock market powered through a host of negative supply-chain commentary, with investors bidding up growth and value stocks amid a fear of missing out on further gains. The S&P 500 (+1.6%) and Dow Jones Industrial Average (+1.1%) set intraday and closing record highs.

The Nasdaq Composite (+1.3%) and Russell 2000 (+1.1%) also performed well with gains over 1.0%.

Granted, most companies did beat EPS estimates, which was cited as a source of fuel for the value stocks. Remarkably, shares of companies that highlighted supply chain issues did suffer as a result, but the broader stock market looked past those concerns.

The list of companies that mentioned supply chain/pricing issues included Procter & Gamble (PG), Intel (INTC), Honeywell (HON), and Snap (SNAP) — for its ad partners, at least. SNAP also attributed Apple’s (AAPL) privacy changes for its disappointing results/guidance.

Nevertheless, the buy-the-dip mantra that started earlier this month persisted this week. Ten of the 11 S&P 500 sectors closed higher, led by the real estate (+3.2%), health care (+2.9%), financials (+2.8%), and utilities (+2.4%) sectors with gains over 2.0%.

The communication services sector (-0.6%) was the only sector that ended the week lower, predominately due to Snap’s disappointing news negatively impacting Alphabet (GOOG) and Facebook (FB) on Friday.

In the Treasury market, maturities across the curve sold off amid expectations for the Fed to hike rates sooner than expected amid persisting inflation pressures. The latter was further manifested in higher oil prices ($83.77/bbl, +1.51, +1.8%).

The 2-yr yield rose seven basis points to 0.47%, and the 10-yr yield rose eight basis points to 1.66%. The U.S. Dollar Index fell 0.3% to 93.62.

Updated: 22-Oct-21

A weekly recap of market activity and events, featuring commentary, analysis written with individual investors in mind.