It was a wild session on Wall Street, with big market swings, as investors assessed Russia’s military buildup on Ukraine’s borders and the Federal Reserve’s meeting this week which begins tomorrow.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed with a gain of 101 points or 0.3% erasing a 1,000+ point drop. The S&P 500 also curbed all losses to end 0.3% higher and the Nasdaq Composite, at one point down nearly 5%, rose 0.6%.
“We are now dealing with legitimate risk in the market,” said Jeff Sica, CIO of Circle Squared Alternative Investments.
Consumer discretionary and energy stocks led the rebound even as oil fell 2% to $83.31.
In stocks, Peloton shares rose after the Wall Street Journal reported activist investor Blackwells Capital LLC is calling for CEO John Foley to fired after he denied reports that the company was pausing production on bikes and Treads. The stock clocked its worst day in a decade last Thursday.
Kohl’s shares jumped after the company confirmed it has received multiple takeover offers without naming names. Over the weekend, a group backed by Starboard Value reportedly offered the company a deal valued at $64 per share, according to the Wall Street Journal. Separately, Engine Capital, in a letter to the retailer’s board, urged management to accept the deal.
Ford rolled out the Bronco Raptor which is being billed as “the most powerful street-legal Bronco ever” according to the automaker.
Colgate bucked the heavy selling on Wall Street with modest gains ahead of earnings on Friday.
Elsewhere, big-cap consumer and technology titans slated to report this week include Apple, Tesla, Microsoft, Intel and IBM – which reports Monday after the bell.
And the Federal Reserve’s first meeting of the year takes place as investors grow more worried about how aggressively policymakers will tighten this year.
Historically low interest rates, dubbed quantitative easing, or QE, have helped support the broader market as the economy absorbed a sharp hit from the pandemic in 2020 and then recovered over the last two years.
“The FOMC (Fed) meeting dominates the macro calendar this week and is likely to keep risk sentiment on the hesitant side with an end to QE and imminent rates hikes likely to be announced,” economists Nicholas Mapa and Robert Carnell of ING said in a commentary.
Some economists believe the U.S. central bank needs to move faster to tamp down surging prices by raising rates. U.S. consumer prices rose 7% in December compared to a year earlier, the biggest increase in nearly four decades.
In crypto currencies, Bitcoin continued its slide skidding to the $32,000 level before bouncing off the lows.