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Wall Street Hits the Brakes After Strong, Weekslong Rally

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Wall Street hit the brakes Tuesday, a day after its remarkable, weekslong rally brought the S&P 500 back to positive for the year and the Nasdaq to a record high.

The S&P 500 was down 0.5per cent as of 11 a.m. Eastern time, after being down as much as 1.2 percent earlier. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 144 points, or 0.5 percent, to 27,427, and the Nasdaq composite was up 0.3 percent.

Skeptics have been saying for weeks that Wall Street’s huge rally, which reached 44.5 per cent between late March and Monday, may have been overdone.

The economy has given glimmers of hope that the recession could end relatively quickly as governments lift their lockdown orders. Still, the stock market has been soaring much more quickly than the economy and corporate profits are expected to.

We see a little bit of a pause and a little bit of a reversal,” said Bill Northey, senior investment director at U.S. Bank Wealth Management.

Some of that is an appropriate reconciliation with the pace for the restart.

In another sign of increased caution, the yield on the 10-year Treasury yield fell to 0.82 percent from 0.88 percent late Monday.

It tends to move with investors’ expectations of the economy and inflation, though it’s still well above the 0.64 percent level where it started last week.

European stock markets were also lower. Germany’s DAX lost 1.5per cent after the country reported that its exports fell by a quarter in April. France’s CAC 40 sank 1.4 percent, and the FTSE 100 in London dropped 2.1 percent.

Asian markets were mixed. Japan’s Nikkei 225 slipped 0.4 percent after the government reported that wages fell in April as the country widened precautions to fight the coronavirus pandemic, which caused some businesses to close or limit their operations.

But the Hang Seng in Hong Kong rose 1.1 percent and South Korea’s Kospi added 0.2 percent.

Wall Street has generally been rising since late March, at first on relief following emergency rescues by the Federal Reserve and Congress.

More recently, investors have begun piling into companies that would benefit most from a reopening economy that’s growing again.

Banks, airlines, energy companies and other companies whose profits need the economy to get closer to normal have been leading the way in recent weeks.

They got a big boost on Friday when the government said that employers surprisingly added jobs to their payrolls last month, a sign that the economy could pull out of the recession that began in February relatively quickly.

But such companies went into reverse on Tuesday. American Airlines and Alaska Air Group both fell more than 8 per cent for some of the sharpest losses in the S&P 500, a day after they were near the top of the leaderboard.

Stocks in the energy, financial and industrial sectors fell more than the rest of the market, also mirroring their performance from a day before.

Smaller stocks also pulled back following a furious run. The Russell 2000 index of small-cap stocks fell 2 per cent, after a 10.2 per cent rally in a little more than a week.

Skeptics of the rally have been saying that many risks still lurk ahead on the long road to a full recovery.

Chief among them is the possibility of a second wave of coronavirus infections, which could lead states and nations worldwide to tighten up on lockdown measures that could again choke the economy.

Plus, one month of improving jobs data does not necessarily mean a trend.

The next big milestone for markets is coming Wednesday, when the Federal Reserve announces its decision on monetary policy following a two-day meeting.

The Fed’s promise of immense, unprecedented amounts of aid helped stocks begin their rally, and investors want to see their reaction to the recent upturn in jobs numbers.

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