Stock market news for October 2, 2024

The Dow finished Wednesday’s session with a slight gain.

The Dow added nearly 0.1%, as did the Nasdaq Composite. The S&P 500 ended a hair above flat.

— Alex Harring

U.S. equities have historically benefited from periods of Chinese stimulus and credit expansion, according to Strategas Securities.

“During periods where the credit impulse measure expanded in the past, the S&P 500’s median advance was 15.0% with 6 of the 7 periods showing positive returns,” strategist Ryan Grabinski wrote in a Wednesday note.

Materials have typically outperformed during these periods, while financials and health care have lagged, he noted.

“We will be watching for outperformance of Materials as an indicator for the validity and effectiveness of China stimulus moving forward,” Grabinksi said.

— Hakyung Kim

The three major averages continued flickering around their flatlines entering the final hour of trading.

The S&P 500 was around flat shortly before 3 p.m. ET. The Dow and Nasdaq Composite each rose 0.1%.

— Alex Harring

Investors looking for a strategy to playing the market over the next 10 days may want to take a cue from an age-old Wall Street adage.

The saying — known as sell Rosh Hashanah, buy Yom Kippur — suggests that investors should sell into the Jewish new year and buy into the day of atonement.

The start of the Jewish new year begins Wednesday evening, with Yom Kippur starting Oct. 11.

— Samantha Subin

Despite rising volatility in the stock market as the November election approaches, Citi strategist Scott Chronert is avoiding the more defensive parts of the market, which he believes are historically expensive.

“We don’t see any urgency to go back to those sectors. We prefer to either go down the growth path or begin to kind of set up for the other side of this hawkish Fed narrative,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Wednesday morning.

Instead, Chronert is currently bullish energy, banks and cyclical names.

— Lisa Kailai Han

Stocks may be near all-time highs in a seasonally poor month, but Barclays still has an optimistic outlook on equities.

“The path of least resistance remains to the upside, as the global rate-cutting cycle and China stimulus keep a soft landing on track,” Emmanuel Cau wrote on Wednesday.

Cau said an improving outlook on the consumer has him closing his underweight rating on autos and discretionary stocks, though soft growth in the European Union has him cutting his rating in banks to market weight from overweight.

— Sarah Min

19 stocks in the S&P 500 were trading at new 52-week highs on Wednesday.

Of these names, 13 tickers were trading at new all-time highs. Stocks that hit this milestone included:

• Tractor Supply trading at all-time highs back to its IPO in 1994 after being taken private by an LBO in 1982
• Ameriprise Financial trading at all-time highs back to its IPO in October 2005
• Automatic Data Processing trading at all-time high levels back through our history to 1974
• Raytheon Technologies trading at all-time highs back to when the United Technologies name was adopted in 1975
• NRG Energy (NRG) trading at all-time highs back to its IPO in May, 2000
• Vistra trading at all-time highs back through our history to September 2016

Humana was the only stock in the index trading at new 52-week lows during Wednesday’s session.

— Lisa Kailai Han, Christopher Hayes

Shares of Nvidia have gained 1.5% on Wednesday as the chip stock looks to shake off a decline of more than 3% in yesterday’s session.

The rise for the nearly $3 trillion market cap stock is helping to stabilize the broad market indexes on Wednesday.

However, shares of Nvidia are down over the past three months as some of the momentum of the artificial intelligence trade appears to be fading. One small research firm downgraded the chip stock on Wednesday, citing a slowdown in data center demand.

— Jesse Pound

Though he supported September’s aggressive rate…