Wall Street is selling pretty much everything heading into a widely expected quarter-point interest-rate cut.
The Dow was down 165 points, or 0.4%. The S&P 500 was down 0.1%. The Nasdaq Composite was moving in and out of positive territory. But the latter two index moves are being boosted by a handful of Big Tech names like Tesla, Amazon, Apple, and Meta Platforms.
Energy and consumer discretionary were the only major S&P 500 sectors gaining—the former on the rise with WTI crude oil futures up 1.4%. Tesla and Amazon were lifting the latter.
Taking a look at factor-focused exchange-traded funds that offer exposure to specific kinds of stocks, virtually all the noteworthy ones were down. That ranged from funds focused on momentum, to growth, small-caps, risk, and even dividends and low volatility.
The yield on the 2-year Treasury note was down to 3.52% with bets on a quarter-point cut tomorrow at 96.1%. The other 3.9% is related to bets on a larger half-point cut.