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Investing.com – The S&P 500 slumped Thursday as investors remained wary of making big bets on stocks even as the prospect of a government shutdown eased.
The S&P 500 fell 0.3%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.4%, or 270 points, the Nasdaq was up 0.4%.
The Senate on Thursday backed a short-term appropriations bill to keep the government running through Dec. 3. The bill is set for a vote in the House, where it is expected to get approved, and sent to the President Joe Biden to avoid government shutdown.
But the drama on Capitol Hill will renew as lawmakers remain at stalemate over the plans to raise the debt ceiling to prevent the U.S. defaulting on its obligations by Oct. 18.
As well as uncertainty over developments in Washington, economic data showing a third-weekly rise in jobless claims stoked fears about a slowing recovery in the job market and weighed on sentiment.
In the week ended Sept. 25, jobless claims rose by 11,000 to 362,000, missing economists’ expectations for a fall to 330,000.
Cyclical stocks – those that moved in tandem with the economy – were the worst performing as financial, industrials and energy traded in the red.
Energy, which is set to end the month positive, was also dragged lower by falling oil prices following data on Wednesday showing an increase in US crude oil stocks as production normalized.
“US crude oil production grew by another 500,000 barrels per day week-on-week to reach 11.1 million barrels per day, which can be seen as a normalisation following the hurricane-related outages,” Commerzbank (DE:CBKG) said.
Against the backdrop of ongoing political drama, investor sentiment continues to be challenged and weighed on the broader market as tech gave up some on its intraday gains.
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN), Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) the so-called Fab 5, which make up for about 25% of the S&P 500, were mixed.
The struggles in tech come even as the appreciation in Treasury yields took a breather, though the 10-year yield continued to trend above 1.5%.
CarMax (NYSE:KMX), meanwhile, also reported quarterly results that fell short on the bottom line, sending its shares more than 10% lower.
