Wall Street on Thursday continued to struggle for momentum, as a slide in Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) and Micron Technology (MU) capped gains. Meanwhile, U.S. Treasurys rebounded after a plethora of economic data lent support to a scenario where the Federal Reserve can start cutting interest rates.
The benchmark S&P 500 (SP500) was last up 0.04% to 5,480.00 points in midday trade, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (COMP:IND) was higher by 0.17% to 17,836.16 points. The blue-chip Dow (DJI) had climbed 0.25% to 39,223.76 points.
Of the 11 S&P sectors, eight were in the red.
Walgreens (WBA) plunged, after top boss Tim Wentworth said quarterly pharmacy margins had eroded in a difficult operating environment. Moreover, the chief executive said the company would close a “substantial number” of poorly performing drugstores. Walgreens (WBA) back in February lost its place among the Dow 30 constituents.
Micron Technology (MU) retreated, after the memory chipmaker issued guidance that was in-line with estimates. For a company that is anticipated to generate billions from its artificial intelligence memory chips, the slightly conservative guidance disappointed some of the extremely high expectations that investors had going into the quarterly report.
The earnings focus now turns to Nike (NKE), with the world’s largest shoemaker scheduled to announce numbers after the closing bell.
Thursday also saw an extremely busy economic calendar. Before the start of regular trading, the U.S. Census Bureau said new orders for manufactured durable goods unexpectedly edged up 0.1% M/M in May. Still, the rate of increase has now declined for four straight months.
“To that end, while overall orders revealed a bit of an upward surprise, the report was consistent with a fairly-weak demand environment as capex conditions remain constrained by elevated costs and uncertainty generally … Capex conditions are unfavorable, and even if the Fed is able to lower rates later this year, we’re unlikely to see a reprieve in terms of borrowing costs until next year,” Wells Fargo’s Shannon Seery Grein said.
At the same time, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis released its final estimate for Q1 U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) growth, revising it upward to +1.4% from +1.3%. The GDP growth remains significantly lower than Q4 2023’s gain of 3.4%.
The durable goods orders update and especially the final GDP estimate both pointed to signs that the Fed’s aggressive monetary policy tightening was having its intended effect on slowing down the economy.
But in perhaps the most notable data report of the day, the number of Americans filing for insured unemployment in the past week increased to 1.839M, the highest level since November 2021.
Insured unemployment, also known as continuing claims, is the number of people who have already filed for an initial jobless benefit and have then filed another claim to continue getting benefits for another week.
“Jobless claims continued their choppy but gradual grind higher last week. Continuing claims of 1,839k surprised more meaningfully to the upside for the week ending June 15 (1,828k cons) but was just above my estimate of 1,835k,” Parker Ross, global chief economist at Arch Capital Group, said on X (formerly Twitter).
“While both measures of unemployment have been deteriorating since the beginning of the year, continuing claims still reflect a more substantial softening of the labor market,” Ross added.
Resilience in the labor market, along with high inflation, has been one of the biggest reasons the Fed has not been able to ease monetary policy yet.
Additionally, shortly after the opening bell, another indicator showed the cooling effect tighter monetary policy had had on the housing market. The National Association of Realtors said pending home sales slipped 2.1% M/M in May to a record low.
In response to the weak economic calendar, U.S. Treasury yields fell as traders snapped up bonds. The longer-end 30-year yield (US30Y) was down 5 basis points to 4.43%, while the 10-year yield (US10Y) was down 4 basis points to 4.29%. The shorter-end, more rate-sensitive 2-year yield (US2Y) was also down 4 basis points to 4.72%.
See live data on how Treasury yields are doing across the curve at the Seeking Alpha bond page.