On June 4, local time, the three major indexes of the US stock market closed slightly higher, the Dow rose 0.36%, the S&P 500 index rose 0.15%, and the Nasdaq rose 0.17%.
In terms of individual stocks, Nvidia rose more than 1% to another record high, with a total market value of $2.86 trillion.
In other news, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said in a statement Tuesday that the agency has granted SpaceX a launch permit allowing it to conduct its next test flight. SpaceX is currently planning to launch Starship from its Starbase launch facility on the southern tip of Texas as early as June 6 local time. Earlier, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk posted on the social platform X that “Starship is ready to fly.”
The jobs data beat expectations
The three major indexes closed slightly higher
On June 4, local time, the three major indexes of the US stock market closed slightly higher. At the close, the Dow was up 140.26 points, or 0.36%, at 38,711.29. The NASDAQ rose 28.38 points, or 0.17%, to 16,857.05. The S&P 500 rose 7.94 points, or 0.15 percent, to 5,291.34.
Employment data released by the Labor Department on Tuesday showed job openings in April at 8.059 million, the lowest level in more than three years. Analysts polled by Dow Jones had expected 8.4 million job openings on average.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Commerce Department released data showing that the U.S. factory orders in April rose 0.7% m/m, expected 0.60%, 1.60% previously. U.S. factory orders excluding transportation rose 0.7% m/m in April, compared with expectations of 0.5% and 0.50%. U.S. durable goods orders for April were revised up 0.6% m/m, 0.70% expected, 0.70% previously.
After the data was released, Fed interest rate swaps indicated that the Fed would accelerate the pace of rate cuts in 2024. Traders are now pricing in a nearly 62 percent chance of two rate cuts this year, up from about 36 percent a week ago, according to CME Group’s Fed-watch tool.
Nick Timiraos, a prominent financial commentator known as the Fed’s mouthpiece, said: “Imbalances in the US Labour market continue to ease. Job openings fell below 8.1 million in April, and the job vacancy to unemployment ratio fell to 1.24, matching October 2019 levels.”
But Megan Horneman, chief investment officer at Verdence Capital Advisors, expressed skepticism about the likelihood of a Fed rate cut this year because inflation, especially price pressures in the service sector, remain sticky. She noted that the broader market is likely to “remain fairly sideways” until more insights are gleaned from the jobs report.
The most closely watched economic data this week is Friday’s non-farm payrolls report for May, which will be used by investors to gauge the state of the U.S. labor market and its impact on the Fed’s monetary policy path.
That came after weak manufacturing data on Monday weighed on sentiment. The dollar index fell to a multi-month low after data showed a further weakening in US manufacturing activity, leading markets to believe that US economic “exceptionalism” may be failing.
Nvidia was again favored by brokerages, and its stock price hit a new high
In sector terms, six of the 11 major S&P 500 sectors rose and five fell. The real estate and consumer staples sectors led the gains with gains of 0.95% and 0.93%, respectively, while the materials and energy sectors led the declines with losses of 1.22% and 0.97%, respectively.
Big tech stocks were mixed. Boeing rose more than 2%, Nvidia rose more than 1%, Broadcom, Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon, Google Class A shares rose slightly, Meta, Netflix, Qualcomm, Intel, Tesla fell slightly, ASML, TSMC fell more than 1%, Chaowei Semiconductor fell more than 2%.
Nvidia rose 1.25%, sending its shares to another all-time high and giving it a market capitalization of $2.86 trillion. Mizuho Securities raised its price target on Nvidia to $1,275 from $1,180 and maintained a “buy” rating, citing the expected success of the company’s upcoming Blackwell GPU platform and the company’s upcoming stock split.
Berkshire Hathaway Class A shares (BRK.A) closed down 2.17 percent. On Monday morning, the stock saw an unusual price swing, plunging 99.97% from $627,000 to $185.1, with about 50 shares traded at that price. The Securities Quotations Association (CTA), which disseminates real-time trading data on stock exchanges, said Monday’s trading data issue was related to new software released by its data centers and that the error has now been fixed. The New York Stock Exchange said it would cancel the erroneous trading in the shares.
AMD closed down 2.18 percent. AMD recently detailed a new CPU, NPU and GPU leadership architecture to bring computing power to end-to-end AI infrastructure from the data center to the PC. AMD previewed the fifth-generation AMD EPYC server processors with leading performance and efficiency that will be released in the second half of 2024. AMD announced the launch of the third generation of AI-enabled AMD mobile processors, the AMD Ryzen AI300 series, and the AMD Ryzen 9000 series processors for notebook and desktop PCS, respectively.
Financial stocks were mostly down. Barclays, Deutsche Bank, American International Group, Mizuho Financial fell more than 2 percent, U.S. Bancorp, Capital One Financial, MetLife, UBS, Citigroup, Regional Financial, jpmorgan Chase, Bank of New York Mellon, Wells Fargo, Hartford Financial fell more than 1 percent, Morgan Stanley, Charles Schwab, Bank of America, Allstate Insurance and Travelers Insurance were down slightly, while Goldman Sachs, American Express, mastercard and Visa were up slightly and BlackRock was up more than 1 percent.
Energy stocks were mostly down. American Energy, BP, Imperial Oil down more than 2%, Marathon Oil, Brazil Oil, Apache Oil, ExxonMobil, Schlumberger, Conocophillips, Occidental Oil, Shell down more than 1%, Chevron slightly lower, Duke Energy up more than 1%.
Exxon closed down 1.56 percent. The company recently released statistics showing that in the first quarter of 2024, its net profit was $8.22 billion, down 28% year-on-year. The analysis said that the profit decline was mainly caused by the decline in natural gas prices and the deterioration of refinery profit margins.
Popular Chinese stocks were mixed, with the Nasdaq China Golden Dragon Index (HXC) closing down 0.99 per cent. Tiger fell more than 4%, Ctrip, New Oriental fell more than 3%, iQiyi, NiO fell more than 2%, ideal Automobile, Tiger Securities fell more than 1%; Bilibili rose more than 1%.
In other markets, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude for July delivery fell 97 cents, or 1.31 percent, to settle at $73.25 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
SpaceX’s fourth Starship orbit test flight is nearing
According to foreign media reports, the US Federal Aviation Administration on June 4 local time to SpaceX issued a launch license for the fourth Starship orbit test flight. The mission is currently scheduled to take place no earlier than June 6 from SpaceX’s Starbase launch facility on the southern tip of Texas.
On June 3, Beijing time, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk posted on the social platform X that “Starship is ready to take off.” In this test flight, SpaceX’s focus is no longer on reaching orbit, but on demonstrating the ability to return and reuse starships and super-heavy rockets.
In March, on its third attempt, the Starship completed an almost complete spaceflight test, reaching orbital speed for the first time and flying farther than ever before, only to break up on return to Earth. Starship has been launched twice before, in April 2023 and November 2023, but both ended in failure.
