Stock Market Today: Markets Settle Down, But Backdrop Remains Rosy
The IMF upgraded its U.S. and global growth forecasts, and another jobs datapoint impressed, but stocks mostly spent Tuesday treading water.
Monday's blowout session that sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 to new heights was followed by much calmer, more horizontal, trading on Tuesday.
But it wasn't for a lack of additional positive ammunition following Friday's blockbuster jobs report.
This morning's Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) was another window into an improving employment situation, showing that U.S. job openings hit a two-year high in February. Also, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) upgraded its 2021 outlook for both U.S. economic growth (from 5.1% to 6.4%), and global economic expansion (from 5.5% to 6.0%).
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Still, the major indices spent Tuesday digesting the prior session's gains; the Dow slipped 0.3% to 33,430, the S&P 500 was off 0.1% to 4,073, and the Nasdaq Composite was marginally off to 13,698.
Recovery-oriented stocks were among the day's individual winners, especially those in the restaurant industry. Yum Brands (YUM, +3.1%), Domino's Pizza (DPZ, +2.4%) and Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG, +2.4%) all finished solidly in the black.
Other action in the stock market today:
- The small-cap Russell 2000 declined by 0.3% to 2,259.
- U.S. crude oil futures improved by 1.2% to $59.33 per barrel.
- Gold futures also were higher, by 0.8%, to $1,743 per ounce.
- Bitcoin prices closed 1.3% lower to $58,242. (Bitcoin trades 24 hours a day; prices reported here are as of 4 p.m. each trading day.)
E-Commerce Can Still Get It Done
As great as "reopening plays" have been of late, don't fall into the trap of thinking that all of 2020's COVID-assisted trends are duds.
Take e-commerce, for instance.
While you might imagine a vaccinated America abandoning its keyboards for the malls, the smart money recognizes that COVID only further entrenched the already growing digital-spending trend, and they see further promise even as more people get ready to go out.
"The convenience offered by eCommerce will continue to be an important consideration to consumers as they return to travel and social activities, and those people who tried shopping online for the first time during COVID are likely to continue using these services with greater frequency moving forward," says a team of Canaccord Genuity analysts.
Many of the best individual plays are the very same stocks that enjoyed a COVID lift, and some are considered among the market's most innovative companies -- an important quality that can drive outsized long-term returns.
But if you're hesitant to put all your chips on one or two individual names that could get choppy over the short term, we don't blame you, and we have a solution: e-commerce funds. Read on as we highlight nine e-commerce ETFs that leverage the growth in digital spending in a variety of ways, and explain how each one might suit different individual investors' tastes.
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