US stocks closed at record highs on Wednesday when Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th president – with the new commander-in-chief setting a record for stock gains between his election and his inauguration.
The benchmark S&P 500 index rose, finishing 14 percent higher on inauguration day than on election day, breaking a record set by President Hoover in 1928 when the S&P rose 13.3 percent during the same interval, according to MarketWatch.
Biden will waste little time turning the page on the Trump era, aides said, signing 15 executive actions in the afternoon on issues ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic to the economy and climate change.
“I’m not sure the Inauguration Day politics have done much, but certainly the expectation for more than a trillion stimulus packages,” said Ross Mayfield, investment strategy analyst at Baird, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The Dow has gained about 57 percent and the S&P 500 is up about 68 percent since Donald Trump took office on January 20, 2017, which is comparable to a 65 percent jump in the Dow and 75 percent gains in the S&P during the first term of the Obama Administration.
Wall Street’s major indices hit record highs in recent months, with the blue-chip Dow jumping about 13 percent since the presidential election in November, while investors bet on a strong economic recovery in 2021 thanks to the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine and bigger pandemic plan.
Shares of the world’s largest streaming service Netflix rose Wednesday after it said it would no longer have to borrow billions of dollars to fund its TV shows and movies.
The rest of the FAANG group all jumped with profit results in the coming weeks. The NYSE FANG + TM index also went up.
“It’s a tech outperformance day that’s been pretty rare in the past two or three months as the cyclical spin has gotten a little bit underway,” Mayfield said.
Nearly all 11 major S&P sectors advanced in afternoon trading, with communications services, consumer discretionary and technology being the biggest winners.
Morgan Stanley closed the results of major US lenders and slipped despite posting quarterly earnings that exceeded estimates, driven by the strength of its trading activities.
With stock market valuations nearing their 20-year high, investors hope corporate results and earnings outlook will help them determine the extent to which valuations are justified.
Unofficially, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 257.86 points, or 0.83 percent, to 31,188.38, the S&P 500 reached 52.94 points, or 1.39 percent, to 3,851.85 and the Nasdaq Composite added 260, 07 points or 1.97 percent increases to 13,457.25.
With Reuters