Stocks Fall Ahead Of Fed’s Inflation Data, UnitedHealth Sinks, Bitcoin Tops $61,000: What’s Driving Markets Wednesday?

Stocks dipped modestly following a report indicating a marginal downward revision in the U.S. economic growth rate for the last quarter of the year.

This slowdown was attributed to a revision in inventory figures, despite evidence of robust household spending and investment.

The announcement precedes the release of the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure, expected on Thursday morning.

Despite a generally downward trend on Wednesday, with all major equity indices in the red, the real estate sector emerged as a notable exception, outperforming other sectors.

UnitedHealth Group Inc. UNH was the major laggard among mega-cap stocks, dipping over 4%, after the Department of Justice initiated an antitrust investigation on the America’s largest health insurer.

Meanwhile, both the U.S. dollar and Treasury yields remained relatively stable.

Bitcoin BTC/USD stood out as the market’s brightest spot, gaining over 7% for the day to break above $61,000 amid strong ETF inflows. This surge brings the leading cryptocurrency within just 12 percentage points of its all-time high from 2021.

Monday’s Performance In Major Indices, ETFs

The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY was 0.3% lower to $505.60, the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average DIA fell 0.2% to $388.78 and the tech-heavy Invesco QQQ Trust QQQ fell 0.6% to $434.78, according to Benzinga Pro data.

The Real Estate Select Sector SPDR Fund XLU, was the notable outperformer, up by 1.3%, while the Health Care Select Sector SPDR Fund XLE lagged behind, down 0.9%.

Wednesday’s Stock Movers

• Axon Enterprise Inc. AXON rose 14% as the company reported better-than-expected results last quarter.
• Boston Beer Company Inc. SAM sank over 18% on disappointing quarterly results.
• Other companies reacting to earnings were eBay Inc. EBAY, up nearly 8%, Agilent Technologies Inc. A, up 4%, First Solar Inc. FSLR, up over 2%, Viatris Inc. VTRS, down 5%, Icahn Enterprises L.P. IEP, up 2%, Advance Auto Parts Inc. AAP, up 5.5%, Republic Services Inc. RSG, down 1%.
• Chinese ADRs fell across the board, following Baidu Inc.‘s BIDU disappointing revenue results. Shares of the retail giant fell over 7%. Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd. BABA fell 3.4%, JD.com Inc. JD fell 4.4%, and PDD Holdings Inc. PDD declined 2%.
• Companies reporting after the closing bell are Salesforce Inc. CRM, Snowflake Inc. SNOW, HP Inc. HPQ, Monster Beverage Corp. MNST, Dollar Tree Inc. DLTR, Okta Inc. OKTA, Paramount Global PARA and Nutanix, Inc. NTXT.

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Image created using artificial intelligence with Midjourney.