Stocks bounce back after their worst drop in nearly 2 years
NEW YORK — A rising tide swept stocks higher, and calm returned to Wall Street after Japan’s market soared earlier Tuesday to claw back much of the losses from its worst day since 1987.
The S&P 500 climbed 1% to break a brutal three-day losing streak. It had tumbled a bit more than 6% on a raft of concerns, including worries the Federal Reserve had pressed the brakes too hard for too long on the U.S. economy through high interest rates in order to beat inflation.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 294 points, or 0.8%, while the Nasdaq composite gained 1%. Stocks of all kinds climbed in a mirror opposite of the day before, from smaller companies that need U.S. households to keep spending to huge multinationals more dependent on the global economy.
Stronger-than-expected profit reports from several big U.S. companies helped drive the market. Kenvue, the company behind Tylenol and Band-Aids, jumped 14.7% after reporting stronger profit than expected thanks in part to higher prices for its products. Uber rolled 10.9% higher after easily topping profit forecasts for the latest quarter.
Caterpillar climbed 3% after the maker of heavy machinery reported stronger earnings than expected.
The whiplash moves for financial markets globally have been the result of several technical factors, not just worries ignited by several weaker-than-expected reports on the U.S. economy, in what strategists at Barclays called “a perfect storm” for causing extreme market moves. One is centered in Tokyo, where a favorite trade for hedge funds and other investors began unraveling last week after the Bank of Japan made borrowing more expensive by raising interest rates above virtually zero.
That scrambled trades where investors had borrowed Japanese yen at low cost and invested the cash elsewhere around the world. The resulting exits from those investments may have helped accelerate the declines for markets around the world.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 jumped 10.2% Tuesday to claw back much of its 12.4% sell-off the day before, which was its worst since the Black Monday crash of 1987. Stocks in Tokyo rebounded as the value of the Japanese yen stabilized against the U.S. dollar following several days of sharp gains.
“The speed, the magnitude and the shock factor clearly demonstrate” how much of the moves were driven by how traders were positioned, according to the strategists at Barclays led by Stefano Pascale and Anshul Gupta.
Still, some voices along Wall Street are continuing to urge caution.
Barry Bannister, chief equity strategist at Stifel, is warning more drops could be ahead because of a slowing U.S. economy and sticky inflation.