Market Recap: Thursday, September 17

The markets closed in the red as it continued to digest the Federal Reserve’s decisions on monetary policies. The Final Round panel discusses the latest.

Video Transcript

[BELL RINGING]

SEANA SMITH: And that does it for the trading day today. Again, another day of selling with the Dow off 125 points, S&P off nearly 1%, and the NASDAQ, the biggest decliner of the three major averages closing off just around 1.25%. Taking a look at some of the biggest laggards within the index is the Dow, for example, the biggest decliner there. Goldman, followed by Salesforce and Nike.

We also saw Microsoft and Apple under a tremendous amount of pressure today. And you can see that when you take a look at the NASDAQ. We're seeing a lot of these big tech companies really accelerate some of the selling that we have seen over the last couple weeks. So Facebook, for example, off 3% today. Apple off 1.5%, Amazon off 2%, Google off nearly 2%, and Netflix also off just around 3%.

Taking a look at some of the other sector action that we are keeping an eye on. It was basically broad-based selling with the exception of materials and industrials. Those two sectors were the only sectors to close the day in the green. Materials was a big outperformer all day, holding on to gains, hitting a new high, material sector up just around 5% in the month of September.

We also got some econ data today on the jobs market, taking a look at jobless claims. First times-- first time claims totaling 860,000. Down slightly from the previous week, but continuing claims, that's been the big focus over the last several months. That fell by more than 900,000 to 12.6 million.

All right, for more on today's market action, what we've been seeing, I want to bring in my co-host for the next 30 minutes, Myles Udland. We're also joined by Yahoo Finance's editor in chief, Andy Serwer, along with Ines Ferre and Jared Blikre. And Myles, when you take a look at the action today, technology, once again, the big underperformer.

And we're seeing that reflected in the NASDAQ with the NASDAQ off over 1% once again.

MYLES UDLAND: Well, we came into August, and we all said, oh, it's a little seasonally weak, watch out. Then August was one of the best months for the mark-- one of the best Augusts for the market we've seen in decades. Well, September is the actual worst month of the year, August being the second worst. And here we are with the S&P off about the same amount that it rose by in August.

And I think that there's certainly a growing sense that when you look at the performance of a number of these big, you know, big cap tech companies, we now have some of these names, you know, Amazon among them, back at levels that we saw right around the Fourth of July. So we're getting into this period.

And, you know, we can-- I'm sure we'll talk about this over the months ahead depending on how things unfold. But markets can always correct one of two ways, through price or through time. So we've kind of done the price thing. But maybe it will indeed be time. Maybe we will be looking at four, five, six months of some of these big cap tech names ultimately kind of going nowhere, right?

Surging to a record high and then pulling back to, you know, levels that prevailed, say, late June or early July, something like that. And I think, you know, what that would mean for the overall market, I mean, who knows, right? We were just talking to Willie Delwiche, who's very excited about the rotation we're seeing, where the, you know, median S&P stock is off 1% while the big names are down 15%, 18%, 20%.

So-- and we touched on this yesterday. I know Andy, you know, is certainly excited by this idea of the market itself underperforming while some stocks do well. And I think that that is a scenario, and we always say, keep an open mind. It certainly seems to be a scenario that's kind of coming more into focus for the markets here as we head towards the election.

SEANA SMITH: Yeah, Myles, I'm happy you brought that up because, Andy, I wanted to touch on that point again. Because when we were just talking to our last guest in the past hour, he was still excited, even though we have a day where the NASDAQ's off over 1%, S&P and Dow also in the red, he's still excited by the rotation that we're starting to see into some of those cyclical sectors. When you take a look at the outperformance of materials, for example, not only today, but over the past couple weeks.

So even though, broadly speaking, we are having another down day here for the market, when you take a look at some of those individual sectors in some of these beaten down means, maybe it's not as bad as it looks on the surface.

ANDY SERWER: Yeah, and well, rotation doesn't get you to the holiday season, though, Seana, and neither does relative performance, right? I mean, you need absolute returns, baby. I mean, at some point, right? I mean, you know, so-- but we've had incredible absolute returns since the March lows. So let's not forget that.

You know, I think this is one of these sentiment things. And, you know, we've talked about this before. But, you know, for so long, we've been able to sort of trade on the currency that the Fed's actions were positive. Well, of course, the Fed's actions were dovish because things were so bad, you know? And so, you know, finally, that-- at some point, that catches up with you.

And I think Jay Powell made so many points, sort of, along those lines yesterday that the market actually believed him. You know, or in other words, not that the bad news is good news, the bad news is really bad news. And then the jobs report sort of also reaffirmed that. And then, you know, you got other things out there, where you've got President Trump and Robert Redfield disagreeing on the timetable for a vaccine by 12 months.

You know, it's not like a month or two, it's like, well, I say this November, and he goes, yeah, November, November 2021, Mr. President. And by the way, wear a mask. And then the president says, I'm not going to wear-- I mean, we can get into that stuff. So, you know, it's not a particularly great, sort of, 24 hours, I guess, or 48 hours.

And it's not horrible. But it's kind of a little bit of a reality check, I would say, Seana.