The stock market’s movements in recent weeks have often felt like unified action. When one American index fell, the others were generally right there with it, rising and falling in concert. Today wasn’t like that.
Indeed, in regular trading today the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) was down sharply. The S&P 500 dipped a little less, but was mostly in line. The tech-heavy Nasdaq, however, was not. And perhaps even more surprising, a key subset of the technology world wasn’t down at all — it was up.
Here’s how today’s trading left us:
- DJIA: -582.05, -3.04% (-37.12% from 52 week highs)
- S&P 500: -67.52, -2.93% (-34.07% from 52 week highs)
- Nasdaq: -18.84, -0.27% (-30.27% from 52 week highs)
- BVP Nasdaq Emerging Cloud Index: +21.43, +2.12% (-28.03% from 52 week highs)
The day’s declines did not stem from a single fundamental cause. Some financial publications highlighted congressional inaction as the reason. You could easily add rising COVID-19 infections to the list. (Notably while the public markets continue their dive, private investors are still putting nine-figure capital rounds together, which feels contrarian.)
Let’s narrow more. While the Cloud Index tracks SaaS companies — a key startup niche for the venture class — other industries are making interesting moves as well. Let’s take a peek at Uber and Lyft, which enjoyed a surge late last week on the back of Uber promising not to die, following market concerns about its health.
Uber saw shares rise 3.99% to close at $22.40. Lyft shares also rose 6.3% to $22.61 at market close. The two companies are still below their highs in 2020. Lyft and Uber hit year-to-date highs on February at $53.94 and $41.27 respectively.
Other mobility related companies such as automakers saw mixed results. Ford shares took a hit and fell 7.18% to close at $4 after Fitch Ratings downgraded the automaker to a skosh above non-investment grade with a negative outlook driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. Ford is now rate BBB-.
GM shares also fell 2.98% to $17.60. Meanwhile, Tesla shares rose 1.58% to $434.29 a share.
