U.S. markets today: Here's what investors are watching this week
It wasn’t enough to prevent February from going down as a losing month, but Wall Street managed to end the week on a strong note, bolstered by generally positive economic news heading into March.
Following a session marked by the volatility that has defined the market for some time, all three major indexes finished more than a full percentage point higher.
Here are some highlights from Friday.
Closing the month mired in unknowns from Trump’s trade policy to AI sector shakeups, markets were down for the month even after Friday’s uptick— led by an almost 5% dip in the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite.
Looking ahead
Along with tracking current trends, analysts will be looking for a number of indicators in coming days to forecast whether Friday’s late rally is a sign of things to come or an anomaly in an otherwise sinking market.
On Monday, investors will get the latest manufacturing purchasing manager’s index, data on construction spending and auto sales, and remarks from St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem.
Jobs market and inflation reports will trickle out all week, as will additional comments from central bankers, shedding new light on the likelihood of interest rate cuts in the relatively near term.
Analysts will also be paying attention to the larger crypto market’s recent downturn.
February went down as Bitcoin’s biggest monthly decline in nearly three years; it ended the day trading around $84,000 just over a month after hitting an all-time high of more than $109,000.
As Coin Bureau financial analyst Nic Puckrin advised, the “sharp sell-off in crypto on renewed tariff fears shows that Bitcoin, and even altcoins, are now entirely driven by politics.”
And a tense meeting between U.S. and Ukrainian leaders caused a midday stock retreat on Friday, so expect international tensions — and trade policy in particular — to remain a major focus of economists.
Big movers
Stock prices across various industries experienced fluctuations throughout the day, but by the time Friday’s closing bell rang there were some clear winners and losers.
Root (ROOT) added onto its 25.5% Thursday gain with another 11% boost to end the week, in response to a pleasantly surprising quarterly report.
The auto insurance company saw fourth-quarter sales increase 68%, resulting in a profit instead of the loss that analysts had predicted.
On the other hand, disappointing sales estimates for NetApp (NTAP) contributed to a 16.8% drop, making it the S&P’s worst performer of the day and compounding the previous session’s 5% decrease.