Day Traders Diary

12/3/19

The major averages fell for second straight day as President Donald Trump suggested he may want to delay a trade deal with China until after the 2020 presidential election.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 280 points, or 1% to 27,502. The 30-stock average was led lower by trade-vulnerable Apple, Caterpillar and Boeing. The S&P 500 slid 0.7% to 3,093 amid losses in chip stocks like Nvidia, Micron and Advanced Micro Devices. The Nasdaq Composite lost about 0.6% to end the day at 8,520.

At its lows of the day, the Dow was down 457.91 points, or 1.7%. The S&P 500 dropped as much as 1.7% while the Nasdaq traded lower by as much as 1.6%.

Stocks hit the lows of their day after Fox News reported that the White House still plans on moving ahead with scheduled Dec. 15 tariffs on Chinese goods notwithstanding recent efforts at a "phase one" trade truce. Tuesday's losses added to a steep decline from the previous session and led to the Dow's third-straight decline.

Some stock of companies with higher-than-average overseas sales exposure underperformed the broader market: Caterpillar slid 2%, Intel dropped 2.8% and Apple lost 1.8%. The VanEck Vectors Semiconductor ETF, which tracks the performance of major American chipmakers, fell 1.4%.

Conversely, real estate rose 0.7% and utilities rose 0.5% as the lone two sectors to finish in positive territory, predominately due to the safety trade in Treasuries that sent yields sharply lower.

The 2-yr yield dropped eight basis points to 1.54%, and the 10-yr yield dropped 13 basis points to 1.71%. The U.S. Dollar Index declined 0.1% to 97.74. WTI crude increased 0.3%, or $0.14, to $56.13/bbl.