Wall Street may have ended Monday's session mixed, but the day's losses did little to hinder the explosive bull market that major benchmarks have entered less than 6 months after the coronavirus pandemic financial slump. Marking their best month in at least 20 year, market indices have been lifted by stabilizing coronavirus infections, rising optimism towards a COVID-19 vaccine and the Federal Reserve's new low interest conducive monetary policy framework. Both the S&P 500 and Dow Jones ended the month was over 7% gains, but the Nasdaq really outperformed in August, posting a nearly 10% increase.
Looking ahead, September can really define whether or not the new bull market continues to growth or falls back into volatile territory. As the United States gears up for the start of the campaign crunch time before the November presidential election, candidate policies and polling numbers can begin to affect stocks. In addition, health experts have warned of a bad fall and winter with the coronavirus and flu season merging, so only the month will tell where the bull leads.
Here's how the market settled to open the week:
S&P 500 Index (NYSE: SPY): -0.22% or -7.87 points to 3,500.14
Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSE: DIA): -0.79% or -226.32 points to 28,427.55
Nasdaq Composite Index (NASDAQ: QQQ): +0.68% or +79.82 points to 11,775.46
For Major Stock News, shares of Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) soared after their respective 4-for-1 and 5-for-1 stock splits. Major bank shares--Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), Citigroup (NYSE: C), Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM), Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) and Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC)--slumped as treasury yields declined. Rackspace Technology (NASDAQ: RXT) shares jumped following Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, BMO Capital markets and Evercore ISI all giving the cloud company Buy ratings.
For Sector Performance, industries ended the session mixed, with only Information Technology +0.36%, Utilities +0.32%, Health Care +0.32% and Consumer Discretionary +0.17% advancing. The rest that closed with performance losses were Energy -2.19%, Materials -1.49%, Financials -1.24%, Industrials -1.18%, Real Estate -0.85%, Communication Services -0.41% and Consumer Staples -0.32%.
For Commodities and Currency, the U.S. Dollar (NYSE: UUP) fell to a more than two-year low as it was pressured against other global currencies. The dollar index was down more than 0.15% for a day and declined over 1.2% for the month. Gold (NYSE: GLD) prices were bolstered by the falling dollar, with spot gold gaining 0.2% to price at $1,967.68 per ounce, while futures settled up 0.2% at $1,978.60 per ounce. Crude oil futures remained mostly unchanged on Monday, with Brent Crude (NYSE: BNO) steady at $45.81 per barrel, while West Texas Intermediate inched up to $43.05 per barrel.
For Tuesday, investors will turn their attention to fresh economic data manufacturing activity and construction spending.