Stock Market Today: January 1st - 5th, 2024

whelp tomorrow is officially the final trading day for the SCR (santa claus rally) period.

here's where it stands after today's close:


will admit, i don't put a lot into what the SCR does. it's kinda something interesting to talk about at family dinner tables i guess.

i know some like to think that so goes the santa rally, so goes the rest of the year. maybe, as per this chart from the carson group.



while 4 of the past 6 down SCR's did see the full calendar year down in the market. and 5 of the past 6 saw january down pretty significantly.



i think the january barometer (full month performance for jan.) is maybe more important. but, we'll see how this pans out nevertheless...

 

btw guys, if you haven't cast your vote already, we have a 2024 yearly (how bullish or bearish) poll open until this thursday:
https://stonkforums.myvnc.com/forum...rish-are-you-on-the-u-s-markets-in-2024.2173/
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click there to vote!

would be awesome to get a few more votes in there before polls officially close.

 

Top of the morning StonkForumers! Happy Hump Day to all of you and welcome to the new trading day and a frrrrrrrrrrrresh start. Here is a quick check on those futures as we are under half an hour from the US cash market open.

GLTA on this Wednesday, January the 3rd, 2024!

 

Morning Lineup - 1/3/24 - Blame Europe
Wed, Jan 3, 2024

It’s not for another month, but it’s starting to feel a bit like Groundhog Day as futures are once again pointing to a lower open on the day. If you’re looking for a scapegoat, the other side of the Atlantic may be a good place to start. The charts below show overnight market action combining intraday trading in Asian and European markets along with US futures. The chart on the left shows overnight trading from Monday night into Tuesday while the chart on the right shows trading overnight into this morning. In each case, the pattern has been the same. Up until Europe opened, there wasn’t much going on, and while stocks on the continent briefly rallied to start the day, sellers quickly came in and overwhelmed any positive sentiment.



This morning in the US, several catalysts could either break the trend or accelerate it. At 10 AM, we’ll get the December ISM Manufacturing report which is expected to come in below 50 for the fourteenth straight month and is the longest streak in over 20 years. Along with that report, the release of JOLTS for November is expected to increase modestly after last month’s much weaker-than-expected report. Besides those two reports, we’ll get the FOMC minutes at 2 PM.

Yesterday may not have been an especially positive start to a year, but it probably wasn’t as bad as the headline declines in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq would suggest. While the Nasdaq’s 1.63% decline was the fourth worst start to a year for the index on record, and the S&P 500’s 0.57% decline was steep in its own right, overall breadth on the S&P 500 was slightly positive (+19), and the equal-weighted S&P 500 was barely down on the day (-0.03%).

At the sector level, things weren’t so bad either. You probably wouldn’t believe it, but four sectors rallied over 1% and two other sectors were up on the day. Outside of Technology (-2.62%) and Industrials (-1.01%), no other sector ETF declined more than 1% on the day.



Yesterday’s best-performing sector was Health Care as the sector ETF rallied 1.76%. While the sector was a big laggard in 2023, it appears to be making up for lost time in the new year as the stock convincingly broke out above the upper end of its 2023 trading range.

 

Here is a final look at today's market and futures maps, as well as how each sector performed individually at the close on Wednesday, January 3rd, 2024.

 

Here are some of this morning's gappers up & down:

 

Here are this AM's earnings results:


And here are the earnings releases after today's close:

 

Here is a look at today's econ events calendar stateside:

 

gonna wait a little until the cash market settles out here at the close to post the final figures, but it's looking like we had a pretty decently red SCR (santa claus rally) period to start off the year