Dow Jones Reverses Lower As Johnson Wins House Speaker Post; AI Race Leaves GOOGL Behind

In late afternoon trading on Wednesday, indexes continued to fall sharply. Dow Jones Industrial Average lost its early gains, and fell by 0.3%, even though Microsoft (MSFT), which had solid results, rose.

Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana was elected House Speaker on Wednesday. He replaces Kevin McCarthy. Johnson received 220 votes - more than was required - to end the deadlock for the Speaker position. The indexes briefly rose on hearing the news.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell will speak Wednesday at the Moynihan lecture in Social Science and Public Policy, in Washington, D.C., as a growing deficit keeps bond rates high. The Fed will not be discussing monetary policy at the meeting on November 1. It is currently in a "blackout" period. CME FedWatchTool shows that traders expect rates to stay the same in November.

Personal Consumption and Outlays for September will come out on Friday. Econoday predicts that the core PCE index (the Fed's preferred measure of inflation) will taper down to 3.7% annually from 3.9% last month.

S&P 500, the Nasdaq and other tech-dominated stocks suffered worse losses and today's stock market lows. The S&P 500 fell by 1.5%, while the Nasdaq dropped over 2%.

The Nasdaq fell below its day-low follow-through of 6th October on Friday, sending the market into correction.

The volume on the NYSE and Nasdaq was lower than the same time Tuesday.

Innovator IBD50 (FFTY), which is a small-cap Russell 2000, also underperformed, dropping over 2%, and even further below its 50-day moving-average.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury Note rose 11 basis points, to 4.94%. Stocks today also seem to be suffering from the rise.

Crude oil increased by more than 1.5%, to $85.31 per barrel.

Dow Jones Stocks

Boeing (BA), which reported continued losses and a slowdown in sales for the third quarter, reversed lower. The bellwether aircraft manufacturer maintained its cash-flow targets for the entire year. BA stock is tracing a big outside day in strong volume.

Microsoft shares rose by nearly 3% following a quarter that was reported as a "beat and raise" late on Tuesday. Cloud computing drove Microsoft's sales, as it integrated AI features like co-pilot in its Intelligent Cloud cloud platform and Azure cloud platform. The shares gapped up, but then gave back some of their gains in the afternoon. Stock is now in the buy range after a 340.86 price entry.

Visa (V), which is also part of the Dow Jones, has recovered from the 200-day mark after reporting a solid fiscal fourth quarter as the number of cross-border transactions increased.

Stocks moving today

Alphabet's (GOOGL), shares fell by almost 10% when earnings beat expectations. The company is losing share in cloud computing to Microsoft Azure.

T-Mobile's (TMUS), among other earnings movers is retaking its 200-day line. A surge in subscribers helped the wireless telecom beat earnings expectations, even though revenues were behind.

Snap (SNAP), which had made early gains, reversed course in a dramatic manner after the Q3 results announced on Tuesday. Sales and earnings rose, but the note from the company about a pause on some advertising campaigns due to the Israel-Hamas conflict likely sent the stock down.

IBD 50 and Leaderboard stock Meta Platforms will report after market close. Shares are testing 50-day line.

The surprise was that new home sales rose above expectations and surpassed both the consensus of 685,000 as well as August's revised 670,000.