U.S. stocks swing higher as Nasdaq looks to snap four-day losing streak

What’s driving markets

The S&P 500 has lost 1.4% and the Nasdaq Composite 2.8% in just the first two sessions of 2024 as investors appear to be taking some profits following a sharp rally at the end of last year.

Heightened Middle East tensions, concerns that stocks and bonds have become overbought, and worries that the Federal Reserve may not reduce borrowing costs as quickly as hoped have all been blamed for driving the selloff.

But perhaps a more likely explanation, according to James St. Aubin, chief investment officer at Sierra Mutual Funds, is that investors waited to take profits until after the new year to delay their tax obligations.

“I don’t know that there’s a particular catalyst for it other than perhaps you’re entering a period of selling after the new year for tax purposes,” he told MarketWatch in an interview.

Minutes from the Fed’s December meeting released Wednesday showed officials welcomed the waning of inflation but expressed some uncertainty about the timing of rate cuts.

St. Aubin dismissed the notion that the minutes materially impacted investors’ expectations regarding the Fed.

“I don’t think there was anything in there that changed the market’s mind.”

There is no shortage of potentially market-moving news arriving in the coming weeks, including the start of earnings-reporting season for the final three months of 2023.

But more immediately in focus is the U.S. labor market, with the Labor Department’s nonfarm payrolls report, its marquee job-market report, due Friday. Investors have already received several other labor-market reports this week.

On Thursday, private payrolls data from ADP showed U.S. businesses added a solid 164,0,000 new jobs in December.

See: ADP jobs report finds 164,000 new workers hired in December

Meanwhile, U.S. government data showed the number of Americans who applied for unemployment benefits in the final week of 2023 fell to a nearly three-month low of 202,000.

See: Jobless claims drop to nearly three-month low of 202,000

A report on job openings released earlier in the week showed the number of open positions had fallen to a 32-month low of 8.8 million as of November, the latest data available.

Outside of the stock market, crude-oil prices continued to climb on Thursday as concerns mounted about a possible interruption to supplies from the Middle East. U.S.-traded West Texas Intermediate crude futures
CL00,
-2.10%

CL.1,
-2.10%
for February delivery were up 1% at $73.41 a barrel.

Companies in focus

• Amazon.com Inc.
  AMZN,
  -1.09%
  shares were down 2.5%, helping to weigh on the Nasdaq

• Mobileye Global Inc.
  MBLY,
  -25.38%
  slumped after the creator of self-driving technology issued a revenue warning.

• Walgreens Boots Alliance
  WBA,
  -7.28%
  shares fell after the drugstore chain reported first-quarter earnings that surpassed expectations, but cut its quarterly dividend by 48%.

• Apple Inc.
  AAPL,
  -1.20%
  shares were down after another Wall Street downgrade, this one from analysts at Piper Sandler, who cut their recommendation from overweight to neutral.