After opening mostly up Thursday, stocks drifted lower late in the day in listless trading, despite reports showing continued strong job growth and underlying low core inflation.
XThe Dow Jones Industrial Average, up early in the day, fell 0.1%. The Nasdaq dropped 0.2%. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 was flat and the small-cap Russell 2000 Index fell 0.2%. Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ), a Nasdaq proxy, fell 0.2% but remained near a record high.
NYSE volume fell 0.3%, while Nasdaq trading volume dropped 3.4% compared to Wednesday's trading, early figures showed.
Despite the tepid action in the current market, some big movers grabbed headlines.
GoDaddy (GDDY), the website builder and hoster, rose nearly 5% after it launched Marketplaces, which lets online sellers link to a number of platforms such as Amazon (AMZN), eBay (EBAY), Etsy (ETSY) and others. Though ranked 13th in the enterprise software industry group, that group is the No. 3 ranked group out of 197. GoDaddy carries a Composite Rating of 95, but an EPS rating of just 75, despite last quarter's 2,300% EPS jump. For the current quarter, EPS is expected to rise 400%.
Fastenal (FAST), the operator of 2,227 construction supply stores, gapped up just under 5.1% on better-than-expected earnings. Fastenal stock cleared a buy point coming out of an eight-week cup in January and is now extended 13% above its buy point.
Five Below (FIVE), a discount retailer, rose 3.3% out of a 31-week consolidation. It topped the 133.75 buy point of a flat base inside a larger consolidation. Five Below got a boost when JPMorgan raised its rating on Five Below stock to overweight. With a 95 Composite Rating, Five Below is No. 1 in the discount and variety retail group.
Also bucking the downtrend, Napco Security Tech (NSSC) surged out of a six-week flat base in heavy volume. It closed just above its buy point of 22.74.
Financials Claw Back; Tesla Hit Again
Bank stocks, just entering their earnings season, started the day up, slumped in midsession, then rebounded late in the day pending earnings reports beginning Friday. JPMorgan (JPM), which reports earnings early Friday, rose 0.9% on light volume, while Goldman Sachs (GS) fell 0.1%.
Tesla (TSLA) stock was down 2.8%, after falling early more than 3%. The renewed drop came after the company said it was putting its Gigafactory battery plant expansion in Nevada on hold. Tesla and Panasonic have invested $4.5 billion, but Panasonic no longer wants to invest in the state-of-the-art plant.
Among IBD sector leaders, Palo Alto Networks (PANW) gained 1.4%, and continued to form a flat base. Palo Alto, with a sterling 99 Composite Rating, currently sits 6% below a 260.73 buy point. SS&C Technologies (SSNC), another 99 Composite stock, rose 1.2%, putting it 3% above the buy zone.
Early Morning News Boost
Early on, it looked like positive news might push markets up.
The job market continued its torrid performance. The number of Americans filing jobless claims fell 8,000 to a near-50-year low of 196,000 last week, a sign that recession concerns may be overblown at the moment.
Meanwhile, the overall producer price index rose 0.6% in March, its biggest gain since last October. The 2.2% year-over-year change in the PPI was above Wall Street estimates of 1.9%. However, the core PPI, which strips out volatile sectors such as energy and food, was unchanged in March and up 2% from last year, the smallest yearly rise for core prices since August 2017.
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