Stocks rose on Tuesday, continuing Monday's rally, as concerns about last week's speculative trading frenzy from retail investors on online chat forums on Reddit seemed to cool down. GameStop (NYSE: GME), which was at the center of the trading mania as it rose 400% last week, fell another 60% on Tuesday. The video game retailer shares have lost more than 70% since Friday.
Last week, investors had worried that the speculative trading activity in heavily shorted stock names was going to move into other parts of the stock market, which harmed confidence and sent market benchmarks to their worst weekly losses since October.
Here's how the market settled on Tuesday:
S&P 500 Index (NYSE: SPY): +1.39% or +52.37 points to 3,826.23
Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSE: DIA): +1.58% or +476.09 points to 30,688.00
Nasdaq Composite Index (NASDAQ: QQQ): +1.56% or +209.38 points to 13,612.78
For Stocks, other heavily-shorted stocks that have become Reddit favorites have also begun to decline, with AMC Entertainment (NYSE: AMC) falling over 40% and other trades like BlackBerry (NYSE: BB), Express (NYSE: EXPR), Koss (NASDAQ: KOSS) and Nokia (NYSE: NOK) settling lower on Tuesday.
For Sector Performance, every sector on the S&P 500 soared higher amid the broader market rally. Financials (NYSE: XLF), Industrials (NYSE: XLI) and Consumer Discretionary (NYSE: XLY) were the biggest gainers at over 2%, while Communication Services (NYSE: XLC), Materials (NYSE: XLB), Information Technology (NYSE: XLK) and Energy (NYSE: XLE) rose over 1%.
For Commodities and Currency, the U.S. Dollar (NYSE: UUP) rose on Tuesday against the euro as investors expect the United States to rebound faster than Europe from the coronavirus pandemic. The dollar index, which tracks the greenback against other global currencies, increased 0.25% to session highs of 91.29. Silver (NYSE: SLV), which as been in the spotlight this week, fell more than 8% to $26.59 an ounce on Tuesday as small investors retreated from Monday's social media driven rally. Gold (NYSE: GLD) prices also fell on Monday, with spot gold declining 1.4% to $1,835.11 per ounce, while U.S. gold futures settled 1.6% lower at $1,833.40 per ounce. Crude oil futures rose on Tuesday, rising to their highest levels in 12 months. International benchmark Brent Crude (NYSE: BNO) was up 2.2% to $57.57 for its third straight session of gains, while domestic index West Texas Intermediate (NYSE: USO) climbed 2.26% to $54.76 each, after touching a session high of $55.26.
For Wednesday, market participants will focus on the ADP employment report for the month of January, as well as corporate quarterly earnings for companies like PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL) and Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM).