Morgans AM: Wednesday, 5 January 2022

Morgans Financial Limited

Banking and industrial stocks powered the Dow Jones Industrial Average to a fresh record closing high overnight as worries about the Omicron variant of the coronavirus subsided, while a fall in heavyweight technology stocks dragged the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq indices lower - Dow up +215-points or +0.59% to 36,800, touching a fresh intraday peak of 36,934.84. Investment banks Goldman Sachs Group Inc (up +3.07%) and JP Morgan Chase & Co (+3.79%), and integrated payments giant American Express Co (+3.21%) were among the leading Dow performers and among those companies seen to be beneficiaries of rising interest rates. The broader S&P500 dipped -0.06% to 4,793.54 after scaling a fresh record intra-day high (4,818.62) earlier in the session. Energy (up +3.10%) was the leading primary sector performer for a second straight session, while Financials (+2.60%) and Industrials (+2.09%) both gained over >2%. Health Care (down -1.38%) and Information Technology (-1.14%) brought up the rear. Ford Motor Co jumped +11.67% and hit a 21-year high after the auto maker said it plans to nearly double production of its all-electric F-150 Lightning pickups at its Dearborn, Michigan, facility to 150K trucks a year to meet “soaring customer demand.” General Motors Co rallied +7.47% after saying the semiconductor supply issues that have plagued the auto industry improved during the fourth quarter. The company said it delivered 440,745 vehicles in the fourth quarter, down -43% from a year ago, when quarterly retail sales were the best in 13 years. Dealer inventory, including in-transit vehicles on their way to dealers, totalled 199,662 at the end of the fourth quarter, up +55% from a record low of 128,757 at the end of the third quarter. Tesla Inc fell -4.18% after soaring +13.53% in the previous session after releasing a statement on Sunday (2 January) and saying it delivered 308,600 vehicles in the fourth quarter alone, crushing consensus analyst forecasts for 266K. The technology-centric Nasdaq shed -1.33%, under pressure from a fresh rise in bond yields. Apple Inc fell -1.27% to US$179.70 a day after becoming the first public company to reach US$3 trillion in market capitalisation (achieving the milestone after briefly trading above >US$182.86 per share). Advanced Micro Devices lost -3.87%, with Chief Executive Lisa Su announcing new products in an event tied to the annual technology conference in Las Vegas. Ms Su said the company was releasing 20 new Ryzen 6000 series laptop processors beginning in February, and three new Radeon RX 6000S GPUs for thin gaming laptops. Ultrathin gaming laptops were the fastest-growing PC segment, selling at a rate more than three times faster than traditional gaming laptops, Ms Su said.The small capitalisation Russell 2000 slipped -0.16%.