Monday’s Stock Market Close: US Equities Finish Mixed, Overcome Early Weakness, Powered By Nasdaq

U.S. stocks finished mixed on Monday, recovering from earlier losses, led by Nasdaq which was powered by strong performance from some familiar big tech names, including Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT) and Intel (INTC).

Early sentiment was negative after South Korea and some other countries reported new confirmed cases of coronavirus, triggering fears of a second wave of the pandemic.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 109.33 points to 24,221.99, while the S&P 500 inched up 0.39 of a point to 2,930.19 and the Nasdaq Composite Index rose 71.02 points to 9,192.34.

Volume on the New York Stock Exchange totaled 3.91 billion shares with 1,036 issues advancing, 34 setting new highs, and 1,893 declining, with 13 setting new lows.

Active movers were led by AMC Entertainment Holding Inc. (AMC), Ford Motor Co. (F), General Electric Co. (GE) and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD).

“The COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the essential role that technology plays for businesses and consumers, and stoked expectations that the recession could see many of the largest growth companies become even more dominant,” said Salvatore Ruscitti, U.S. equities strategist at MRB Partners.

South Korea, once thought to have stabilized its coronavirus outbreak, warned that it detected a new cluster of cases involving nightclubs, while Japan, China, Germany and Singapore also confirmed new cases of the illness. The World Health Organization warned that some countries which have eased lockdown restrictions have witnessed a spike in virus cases.

The total number of cases around the world has now surpassed 4.1 million, with 1.3 million infections in the U.S.

U.S. President Donald Trump has encouraged more businesses to reopen, while the U.K. government plans to gradually ease its own lockdown.

“I think this part of the [market] bounce was easy to forecast, I think what happens from here again depends a lot on Covid stuff,” said Paul Tudor Jones, founder of Tudor Investment Corp. “There’ll be a shift in focus from liquidity issues somewhere down the line to solvency issues. If we don’t find a vaccine or a cure, if we don’t find a much better way of testing at scale ... then I think the market’s going to have a much more difficult time.”

“The world very much remains on the path to reopening, a process that will accelerate over the coming weeks,” said Adam Crisafulli, founder of Vital Knowledge. “There will be a reckoning around the reopening and linearity narratives (i.e. both are too sanguine right now).”

Overnight in Asia, markets were mostly higher. The Shanghai Composite slipped 0.02%; Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 1.53%; while Japan’s Nikkei-225 jumped 1.05%.

In Europe markets finished mixed, as Britain’s FTSE-100 edged up 0.06%, while France’s CAC-40 fell 1.31% and Germany’s DAX dropped 0.73%.

Crude oil futures slipped 0.12% at $24.71 per barrel, Brent crude rose 1.59% at $30.10. Gold futures fell 0.83%.

The euro edged down 0.21% at $1.0815 while the pound sterling slipped 0.53% at $1.2338.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury surged 6.45% to 0.726% while yield on the 30-year Treasury jumped 4.26% to 1.445%.