S&P 500 Slips as Bank Stocks Slide By

© Reuters.

By Yasin Ebrahim

– The fx foreign exchangeS&P 500 fell Friday, as banking stocks gave up their gains from a day earlier, and big tech continued to nurse losses.

The S&P 500 fell 0.7%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.1%, or 393 points, the NASDAQ climbed 0.2%.

Financials, mostly banking stocks, fell nearly 2%, as the 10-year yield fell further below 1.4% on concerns about the impact of the Omicron variant.

Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC), People’s United Financial (NASDAQ:PBCT), and Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) were among the biggest decliners, with the latter down 4%.

Energy wasn’t far behind, down about 1% as investors continued to assess the threat of Omicron on energy demand.

Industrials also added to the selloff in cyclical sectors even as FedEx (NYSE:FDX) reported quarterly results that beat on both the top and bottom lines.

FedEx reported better-than-expected earnings per share of $4.83, as higher shipping rates helped offset increased costs during the fiscal second quarter.

“FDX reported fiscal 2Q results that were better than feared, and the company raised its full year guidance,” Deutsche Bank said as it lifted it price target on the FedEx to $310 from $299.

Despite the selling in cyclicals, which trade in tandem with the economy, some continued to back this economically sensitive sector to deliver gains.

“Given our outlook on the economy that eventually once we get past the omicron impact, this economy is still post recessionary growth,” Peter Duffy, chief investment officer of credit at Penn Capital Management said in an interview with on Friday.

“We would tend to favor economic cyclicality are kind of the value names as opposed to the growth themes,” Duffy added.

With that as a backdrop, that would tend to favor economic cyclicality are kind of the value names as opposed to the growth themes.

Big tech, meanwhile, continued to bleed, paced by declines in Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL), and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), as investors reassess their appetite for growth sectors of the market amid expectations for the rates to rise.

Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) proved an exception to the selloff.

Health care was one of the few sectors in the green as a rally in health-care information company Cerner offset weakness in Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) and Eli Lilly & Company.

Cerner (NASDAQ:CERN) rose by more than 12% following a Wall Street Journal reported suggesting the company was in talks about a potential sale to Oracle (NYSE:ORCL).

Johnson & Johnson fell more than 2% after an advisory panel for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted to recommend vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna over the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. 

The CDC flagged new data showing an increased risk of blood clots from the JNJ vaccine.

Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) fell 4% amid concerns about its Alzheimer’s disease securing approval after The European Union's drug regulator on Friday rejected Biogen (NASDAQ:BIIB) Alzheimer's drug, Aduhelm.

In other news,  General Motors (NYSE:GM) fell more than 5% after Dan Ammann, CEO of its autonomous vehicle business Cruise, reportedly left the company.

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