US equity markets mixed, with another steep sell-off for technology stocks – Dow gained +306-points or +0.97%, climbing as much as 650-points and touching a fresh record intra-day peak (32,148.04). Walt Disney Co rallied +6.27% ahead of the company’s annual shareholders meeting, with California health officials last Friday (5 March) gave Disneyland and other theme parks the go-ahead to reopen at limited capacity from 1 April, after a closure of almost a year due to the coronavirus pandemic. The broader S&P500 fell -0.54%, erasing an earlier +1% gain. Information Technology (down -2.46%) led the decline, while Utilities (up +1.39%), Materials (+1.29%), Financials (+1.29%) and Industrials (+1.05%) all advanced over >1%. Tesla Inc (down -5.84%) fell for a fifth straight session. 341 stocks in the S&P500 advanced, while 164 stocks retreated. The technology-centric Nasdaq tumbled -2.41% to settle more than >10% below its 12 February closing high (14,095.47) and booking its first correction since September last year. Apple Inc fell -4.17% to settle around a three month low and has fallen -% from its 26 January record close of US$143.16. The Dow booked its widest outperformance against the S&P 500 since 1971, according to Dow Jones Market Data and the biggest outperformance against the Nasdaq since 2001. The small capitalisation Russell 2000 index added +0.49%.
