Stocks linked to the re-opening economy led a strong start to the week for US equity markets, with the Dow reclaiming the 35,000 level - Dow rallied +647-points or +1.87% to 35,227.03, more than comfortably erasing last week’s -319-point-0.91% decline. The broader S&P500 gained +1.17%, with Industrials (up +1.64%), Consumer Staples (+1.60%), Utilities (+1.53%) and Energy (+1.50%) all logging gains of 1.5%+ to lead all eleven primary sectors higher. Airlines (United Airlines Holdings up +8.32% and American Airlines Group Inc +7.88%) and cruise operators (Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd up +8.22% and Carnival Corp +8.08%) Tesla Inc fell -0.59% after Reuters reported the U.S. SEC has opened a probe into the electric-car maker over whistleblower claims on solar panel defects. The Nasdaq +0.93%. Nvidia Corp fell -2.14% to US$300.37and into correction territory, closing ~10% below their all time closing high of US$333.76 set on 29 November. Late last Thursday (9 December), the Federal Trade Commission sued to block Nvidia’s $40B acquisition of Arm from SoftBank Group Corp (-8.20%) that has met with several headwinds since it was first announced back in late 2020. Fellow chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices Inc (down -3.44%) fell further into correction territory, now down -13.7% from its most recent closing high of US$161.09. Elsewhere, the US listed shares of Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd logged their largest single-day percentage gain since 8 June, 2017 with a +10.4% rally after a tough recent stretch for numerous Chinese internet stocks. The small capitalisation Russell 2000 gained +2.05%.
