US equity markets rallied solidly on Friday night AEST (13 November), with the S&P500 notching a record closing high - Dow up +400-points or +1.37%. Walt Disney Co rose +2.1% after posting a smaller-than-expected fourth quarter loss (-US$0.20c per share on revenue of US$14.71B versus consensus estimates for a loss of -US$0.71c on revenue of US$14.2B) after the close of Thursday’s (12 November) session and reported 73M paid subscribers for its streaming service, Disney+. The broader S&P500 gained +1.36% to a record closing of 3,585.15. Energy (up +3.81%), Real Estate (+2.28%) and Industrials (+2.15%) led all eleven primary sectors higher. Information Technology (up +0.86%) and Utilities (+0.92%) were the relative laggards with gains of less than <1%. Cisco Systems Inc rallied +7.1% after posting a better-than-expected fiscal first quarter result and second quarter guidance that was a little better than analysts’ forecasts after the close of last Thursday’s (12 November) session. The technology centric Nasdaq advanced +1.02%%. Twitter Inc (up +1.57%) chief executive Jack Dorsey and Facebook Inc (+0.68) Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg are due to testify before the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary on Tuesday night AEST (17 November) over their decision to block stories that made claims about president-elect Joe Biden’s son Hunter. The US-listed shares of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding fell -1.3% to close out one of the worst trading weeks (down -13%) for the company. On Tuesday (10 November), China released a draft of antitrust rules aimed at checking popular digital platforms for monopolistic practices, such as using their dominance to push merchants into exclusivity arrangements that keep sellers off rival platforms. The draft came a week after regulators issued microlending rules; halted the debut of financial-technology juggernaut Ant, which was carved out of Alibaba; and rebuked Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma, days before Ant’s expected record US$34B initial public offering (IPO). The Wall Street Journal reported that President Xi Jinping personally intervened to scuttle the IPO after Ma criticized stricter financial regulations. The small capitalisation Russell 2000 index outperformed with a +2.08% rally and booked its first record closing high (1,744.04) since August 2018. The last time the Russell 2000 and the S&P 500 closed at a record high on the same day was 29 August, 2018, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
