Bloom comes off rebound rose
The stock market has lost some of its rebound mojo in a move that has coincided with renewed, and sharp, selling of many cryptocurrencies following reports that China has said it will crack down on bitcoin mining and trading.
Concerns about forced selling in the crypto market are presumably bleeding into the stock market, hurting risk sentiment that has taken some of the bloom off the rebound rose in the growth stocks.
The main weight on the stock market, though, has been the renewed weakness in mega-cap stocks like Apple (AAPL 125.57, -1.74, -1.4%), Amazon.com (AMZN 3203.47, -44.21, -1.4%), Microsoft (MSFT 245.44, -1.04, -0.4%), and Tesla (TSLA 585.25, -1.53, -0.3%). In turn, the response to the better than expected earnings report and guidance from Applied Materials (AMAT 128.71, -1.60, -1.2%) has been disappointing and a weight on the widely-held semiconductor stocks.
The result right now is that the stock market is a mixed bag, with gains in the cyclical sectors helping to offset the weakness in the information technology sector (-0.5%), as well as weakness in the consumer discretionary sector (-0.6%) that is being driven primarily by losses in Amazon.com and Tesla.
The Russell 2000 is up 0.6%; the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 0.5%; the S&P 500 is up 0.1%; and the Nasdaq Composite is down 0.3%.
