Morgans AM: Tuesday 23 February 2021

Morgans Financial Limited

US equity markets weaker as rising Treasury yields and inflationary concerns weighed on some high-flying growth stocks – Dow added +27-points or +0.09%. Disney jumped 4.4%, while industrial giant Caterpillar and chemicals company Dow Inc. both climbed more than 3.5%. American Express and Chevron gained 3.2% and 2.7%, respectively The broader S&P500 fell 0.77%, with Information Technology (down -2.26%) and Consumer Discretionary (-2.15%) the worst performing sectors with declines of over >2%, while Energy (up +3.47%) returned to the top of the primary sector leaderboard.. Tesla Inc dropped -8.55%, the biggest single session fall for the electric vehicle maker’s stock since 23 September, 2020. Some linked the decline to the ~6% decline in Bitcoin overnight, with Tesla disclosing earlier this month that it had acquired US$1.5B of the digital currency for “more flexibility to further diversify and maximize returns on our cash.” Airline stocks rebounded, buoyed by an upgrade to several carriers by Deutsche Bank. American Airlines Group jumped +9.42% The Nasdaq dropped -2.44%, with Apple Inc (-2.98%), Amazon.com Inc (-2.13%) and Microsoft Corp (-2.68%) all dropping at least -2%. However, Oracle Corp rallied +5.43% following a positive story in Barron’s that suggested it could be the next longstanding technology company to transform like Adobe Inc (down -2.46%), Autodesk Inc (-2.52%) and Microsoft, which changed up their business models to embrace cloud-based services over traditional licensed software, and saw their stocks rise as a result. The small capitalisation Russell 2000 index fell -0.69%.