WASHINGTON – Taking off Tuesday morning like one of Tesla guru Elon Musk’s successful SpaceX rockets, the badly battered, tech-heavy and ailing NASDAQ index headed for the moon in Tuesday trading, swiftly slipping its earthly bonds as the 9:30 a.m. ET opening bell clanged away. The Tuesday NAZZ moon-shot, at least as of 1:00 p.m. ET, continued to gain in altitude. That said, you never know where things will end these days.
Just the no-longer ailing NASDAQ and market stats, please
Fox Business has the specific play-by-play on Tuesday’s surprisingly bullish action.
“U.S. equity markets battled higher Tuesday as bond yields eased off their highest level in over a year.
“The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 286 points, or 0.9%, while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite advanced 1.79% and 3.15%, respectively.
“The rally comes a day after the Nasdaq slid into a correction, down at least 10% from its recent peak, as the 10-year yield climbed to a 13-month high of 1.59%.
“On Tuesday, the benchmark yield was trading lower by 5 bps at 1.54%, falling below where it closed on Friday.
“In stocks, mega-cap technology names that have been mauled amid the recent rise in bond yields were bouncing back with Tesla Inc., Apple Inc. [NASDAQ:AAPL] and Netflix Inc. [NASDAQ:NFLX] outperforming.”
Curing the bond yield disease may cure the ailing NASDAQ and its tech friends. For now…
One impolitic word from Washington – always a clear and present danger in 2021 – could derail this much-needed tech recovery in a New York minute, of course. But the big impetus for the tech blast-off today was the sudden drop in bond yields. I.e., interest rates, particularly those pegged to the rapidly soaring 10-year Treasuries upon which, among other things, current home purchase and re-fi rates are based.
Escalating bond yields over the past month put relentless pressure on the previously way-too-high-flying tech stocks, sending the price of this sector back down – way down – toward a more realistic range in early March. Even so, tech’s declining fortunes over the past month or so were proving literally more terrifying to investors than a concealed army of QAnon fanatics.
For at least the last couple of weeks, holders of these battered tech stocks, including some of Wall Street’s biggest names, continued to dump them en masse until this morning’s reverse rout. Even with today’s formerly ailing NASDAQ reversal, considerable damage remains as evidenced by the carnage that still tarnishes these stocks near-term.
Video still from “The Honeymooners.” Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason) with Ed Norton (Art Carney), and Alice Kramden (Audrey Meadows) in a Honeymooners scene. Via Wikipedia entry on “The Honeymooners.” Uncopyrighted photo is in the public domain.
Some fun with Tesla shares. But not very many…
Nonetheless, tech bulls seem happy to control Wall Street’s now mostly-virtual trading floors today, even though their current win streak might find itself derailed again soon. In the meantime, you take your wins when you can and hope you can ride them higher. Like, “To the moon, Alice!”
Speaking of the moon, I finally decided to take a very small chance on trying a small position in the Elon Musk virtue-signaling Toyland known as Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA). Very small. Like one share. This volatile and always way-too-expensive stock really took a beating over the last couple of weeks after soaring to absurd heights. So this morning, I decided to roll the dice, a bit like I did with GameStop shares during the Reddit Riot.
I bought one whole share of TSLA at the low, low price of $602.59. The share promptly took a dive below $600, which is typical for nearly any tech buy you make these days. (Such moves tend to prevent premature investor hubris.) As I write this, that single, silly share of TSLA is darting about, hovering around $662 per share, a nifty 10.14% gain (for now) of roughly $61. Nice work if you can get it. Maybe I shoulda bought two shares.
Nonetheless, I wanted to get a feel for these shares after denouncing them for the better part of the last 5 years or so. I still think the whole Tesla game is something of a taxpayer-supported scam that subsidizes luxury cars that, for the most part, only rich Hollywood types with at least one mechanic on their payroll can afford. Nice work if you can get it. But at least you have to admire Musk for his SpaceX work, which thus far has innovated rings around NASA and other governments’ space agencies.
Are batteries more important than Tesla vehicles?
Musk’s battery innovations as well may spark further innovation in far more useful products than autonomous vehicles, leading to interesting advances in any number of fields. Although, if you think about it, in the automotive universe, such “autonomy” could be remotely controlled by our creeping Federal bureaucracy, and used to limit the mobility of MAGA people with C or worse grades punched in on their social scorecards.
Bottom line:
All this gives us something to think about.
But I digress.
Tuesday thus far seems a lot more fun than the last two weeks or so of losses experienced by most optimistic investors – like this one – who may have been way too long stocks in this weird market.
That said, we’ll all enjoy the fun while it lasts. Meanwhile, I’ll offer occasional breathless reports from on that exciting single share of Tesla that sits in my account.
Later.
*– Headline image: Video still from “The Honeymooners.” Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason) with Ed Norton (Art Carney), and Alice Kramden (Audrey Meadows) in a Honeymooners scene. Via Wikipedia entry on “The Honeymooners.” Uncopyrighted photo is in the public domain.*
