This week Santa and the omicron variant battled it out on Wall Street. Santa won. US equities rose on Thur for a third consecutive trading session. The S&P 500 Index finished the week at an all-time high. There will be no trading today (Fri), US equity markets are closed in observance of the Christmas holiday.
On Thur, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 196.67 pts, or 0.55%, to close at 35,950.56. The S&P 500 index rose 0.62%, leaving the index 25.8% higher for the year. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.85%.
Wynn Resorts (WYNN US, +3.51%), Las Vegas Sands (LVS US) and MGM Resorts International (MGM US, +1.02%) rose in New York trading after authorities in Macau released favorable results from public hearings on the renewal of casino licenses.
Tesla’s (TSLA US, +5.76%) CEO Elon Musk sold a further US$928.6m of Tesla shares, bringing his total disposals to US$15.4b. Musk may be finished exercising options and selling shares. Meanwhile, analysts are upping their estimates for Tesla 4Q deliveries.
The 10-year Treasury note yield notched up 4.12 basis points (bps) to 1.4927%.
The most actively traded US gold futures (Feb) contracts settled up $9.50, or 0.5%, at US$1,811.70/oz. March silver, which is the most actively traded silver futures, rose 12.1 cents, or 0.5%, to end at US$22.940/oz.
The ICE dollar index (DXY), which measures the strength of the greenback against a basket of currencies, fell 0.06% to 96.019.
The front-month Brent and WTI futures closed up $1.56 at US$76.85/bbl and $1.03 at US$73.79/bbl respectively.
European equity markets finished higher on Thur. The UK FTSE gained 0.43%, France's CAC 40 rose 0.77%, while the German DAX advanced 1.04%.
We wish our readers a Merry Christmas! This publication will resume on Dec 28