What Happened in the Market This Week?

After the S&P 500 closed at a record high last week, there was quite a lot of volatility in the stock market this week mainly due to the unknown impact Omicron may have. This week, the Dow Jones fell 3.64 points (1.02%) to 35,365.44, the S&P 500 fell 71.22 points (1.52%) to 4,620.64, and the NASDAQ fell 428.70 points (2.75%) to 15,169.68. The volatility in the market this week was shown in the VIX index (measures volatility) which has considerably increased throughout the second half of the week. In addition, crypto also had a bad week. This week, Bitcoin fell 3,805.90 points (7.59%) to 46,343.30, Etherium fell 244.17 points (5.90%) to 3,895.43, and Cardano fell 0.1272 points (9.44%) to 1.2207. [1]

Weekly Market Stats

Weekly Market Graphs

This Week’s Equity News

• Pleasing earnings were announced from FedEx (FXD) when they reported their earnings on Thursday as their prices have risen since. [2] 
• Darden Restaurants (DRI) stock price has fallen even after having a positive earnings report on Friday. [2] 
• General Motors stock has also fallen due to the report of the CEO of its self-driving car program leaving. [2] 
• Uber Technologies (UBER) stock rose substantially after the CEO mentioned that it has just had its best week ever. 
• Plus, with investors’ excitement about Apple’s (AAPL) future in VR, iGlasses, and iCars, it can possibly become the first ever $3 trillion company in the world. 
• Pfizer’s stock has also been continuing to rise due to news about the COVID pill, the heightened Omicron fear, and the booster being approved for 16 and 17 year olds.
• Semiconductor companies including Nvidia (NVDA) and AMD (AMD) have moved substantially downwards due to the global semiconductor shortage.
• Rivian’s (RIVN) stock has plummeted this week just over 10% after Toyota (TM) has unveiled its EV plans. Specifically, Toyota are planning to release an electric pickup truck which directly threatens Rivian and possibly makes investors double-think its valuation.
• AMC (AMC) stock has risen a tremendous amount as it gained over 19% on Friday in reaction to the new Spiderman movie. 

The Fed Meeting

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) had a meeting to discuss many topics concerning the economy of the U.S. It mentioned that the FOMC will double the speed of tapering where the Federal Reserve will reduce the large amount of Treasury bonds that have been issued in an effort to help the economy during the pandemic.[3] Also, the Fed has predicted the unemployment rate for 2022 to decrease to about 3.5% after experiencing the 4.2% drop in unemployment of this past November. Lastly, the Fed brought up that for interest rates to be raised, they want to see inflation at around 2%. As a result of this meeting, the market has responded somewhat positively as stock prices increased soon after.

This Week’s Gainers

This Week’s Losers

This Week Ahead

This week ahead is going to be a shortened week as markets around the world close on Friday to observe Christmas Eve. 

Monday December 20:

• Nike (NKE) Reports Earnings
• Micron Technology (MU) Reports Earnings
• Braze (BRZE) Reports Earnings
• Carnival Corp (CCL) Reports Earnings

Tuesday December 21:

• Rite Aid Corp (RAD) Reports Earnings
• BlackBerry Ltd (BB) Reports Earnings
• General Mills Inc (GIS) Reports Earnings

Wednesday December 22:

• Carmax Inc (KMX) Reports Earnings
• Paychex (PAYX) Reports Earnings

Thursday December 23:

• No significant market events

Friday December 24:

• U.S. markets closed for the Christmas Eve holiday

[3]

[1] Stock Market Data is taken from Google Finance once the markets closed  and Crypto Data was recorded on 10/17/21 at 6:45 P.M.

[2] Information sourced from Schwab Market Update

[3] Above information is sourced from Investopedia Week Ahead and Yahoo Finance Financial Calendar