Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on August 4, 2022.
Source: New York Stock Exchange
Stock futures fell in Thursday morning trading on expectations that the market would regain some of its gains from the holidays.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures fell 150 points. S&P 500 futures fell 0.3%, and Nasdaq 100 futures also fell 0.3%. The market was closed on Wednesday for Christmas.
Major stock averages may fall for the first time this week after consecutive gains. So far this week, the S&P 500 is up 1.8% and the Dow is up about 1%. Strong gains in mega-cap tech stocks have pushed the Nasdaq index up 2.3% since the start of the week.
Investors were excited about the so-called Santa Claus Rally, which occurs during the last five business days of the year and the first two business days of January. Since 1950, the S&P 500 index has returned an average of 1.3% over this period, significantly outperforming the market's seven-day average return of 0.3%, according to LPL Research. Thursday is the second day of Santa Rally.
“The Santa Claus rally may be alive and well. We'll see, but otherwise it's going to be a tough sleigh ride,” Michael Zinn, senior portfolio manager at UBS Wealth Management, said on CNBC's “Squawk Box.” It could be,” he said. “It's a sleepy time of the year. Institutions aren't really trading. It's a little bit more retail-driven. So what happens at the end of the year is not necessarily an indicator of how things were in January and February. do not have.”
The first jobless claims data Thursday morning could provide the latest information on the health of the labor market.
Month-to-date, the S&P 500 is up 0.1%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq is up 4.2%, thanks to strong gains in Tesla, Apple and Alphabet. However, the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen about 3.6% in that time, its worst month since April.
