Day Traders Diary

3/20/24

The major averages rose into the close with the S&P 500 making new highs after the Federal Reserve left rates unchanged, but signaled possible rate cuts down the road. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 401 points or 1%. The S&P 500 rose 46 points or 0.89% while the Nasdaq rose 202 points or 1.25%.  

Prior to the Fed meeting today, investors feared the recent spate of hot inflation reports would potentially result in even fewer cuts than markets anticipated, however, following the Fed Chairman's comments, Wall Street is now expecting as many as three rate cuts later in the year.

The 10-year Treasury dropped 2 basis points to 4.281%. The 2-year Treasury yield dropped more than 7 basis points to 4.617%.

Tech and the banks led the afternoon rally. Big cap bank, Citigroup made a new highs while the S&P Regional Banking ETF rose 3%.

Within the big cap tech sector, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Nvidia all rose 1% or more. Recent laggards, Apple and Tesla advanced 1.5% and 2.5%, respectively.

Chipotle Mexican Grill advanced 3.5% after declaring a 50 for 1 stock split. Paramount Global jumped 11% following a report that Apollo Global Management made an offer of $11 billion for the film and TV studio firm.

Boeing rose 3% even though they reported disappointing cash burn rates due to issues with their 737 Max.

Wall Street is coming off a positive session for the major benchmarks. The 30-stock Dow advanced 320 points, or 0.8%, notching its best day since Feb. 22. The S&P 500

 rose roughly 0.6%, while the Nasdaq Composite added about 0.4%.