S&P 500 sets record highs on the back of tech stocks

Stock futures increased Thursday evening after a record-setting day on Wall Street, with traders looking forward to the Labour Department’s March jobs report on Friday morning.

Technology stocks led the advances, and the Nasdaq outperformed with a gain of 1.8% during the session. The S&P 500 increased by +0.9% to post a record high. The Nasdaq posted gains of 0.09% at the end of the trading session. The Dow made a profit of 0.01%.

READ: $2 trillion economic recovery plan pushes S&P 500 to record high

• Year-to-date, energy, financial and industrial sectors outperformed
• Technology stocks were the biggest funder to the blue-chip index’s latest milestone.
• (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), Facebook (FB) and Alphabet (GOOGL) contributed 43.8% of the latest 1,000-point gain in the S&P 500.

Top gainers

1. Diamondback up 10.52% to close at $81.22.
2. Marathon Oil up 10.39% to close at $11.79
3. Cimarex Energy up 8.47 % % to close at $64.42
4. Devon Energy up 7.55 % to close at $23.50
5. Lam Research up 7.40 %to close at $639.30

READ: Tesla’s market value bigger than any African country

Top losers

1. Carmax down 7.05% to close at $123.31
2. PVH down 4.47% to close at $100.98
3. Capri Holdings down 3.18% to close at $49.38
4. Nordstorm down 2.93% to close at $36.76
5. Maczy’s Inc down 2.90% to close at $268.63

Outlook

• Treasury bills are still trending upwards which may be seen as a threat to the wall street bull run.
• The jobless rate likely edged lower by 0.2 percentage points to a new pandemic-era low of 6.0%.
• Nairametrics, however, advises cautious buying in this era of growing uncertainties.