Stock Market Today: Dow ends lower as S&P 500, Nasdaq suffer worst day in nearly a month after Iran launches missile attack on Israel
Written by Black Hot Fire Network on October 1, 2024
U.S. stock indexes were trying to bounce back in the final hour of trading on Tuesday, but the Nasdaq Composite was still facing a significant daily decline.
The Nasdaq was off 1.5%, to trade at 17,923 as of 3:40 p.m. Eastern time, according to FactSet data.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was losing 0.2%, to around 42,234.
The S&P 500 was falling 0.8%, to around 5,714.
Stocks were attempting to give back their earlier losses in late afternoon trading after the Israel Defense Forces gave residents the all-clear to leave their bomb shelters, said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers.
But from a stock-market point of view, the escalating tensions in the Middle East “don’t really change the calculus for domestic investors in U.S. stocks,” he said.
“Equity investors are really good at dealing with anything that has a direct effect on stock prices, but they are really bad at dealing with geopolitics,” Sosnick told MarketWatch via phone on Tuesday.
Also helping the sentiment was the fact that oil prices and Wall Street’s “fear gauge” were both reversing some of their earlier gains.
West Texas Intermediate crude for November delivery rose 2.4% to settle at $69.83 a barrel, after trading as high as $71.94. The Cboe Volatility Index, or VIX, was at 18.54 after surging to its session high of 20.73, according to FactSet data.
