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Stock Market News for Jan 23, 2023

U.S. stocks closed sharply higher on Friday after briefly losing the momentum of the January rally earlier in the week, as investors digested mixed earnings reports from a batch of companies. The rally was driven by tech stocks. All three major indexes ended in positive territory.

How Did The Benchmarks Perform?

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) rose 1% or 330.93 points to finish at 33,375.49 points after initially declining earlier in the day.

The S&P 500 climbed 1.9% or 73.76 points to end at 3,972.61 points, snapping its three-day losing streak. Communication services and tech stocks were the biggest gainers.

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The Communication Services Select Sector SPDR (XLC) gained 3.1%. The Technology Select Sector SPDR (XLK) jumped 2.7%. All 11 sectors of the benchmark index ended in positive territory.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 2.7% or 288.17 points to close at 11,140.43 points.

The fear-gauge CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) was down 1.51% to 20.21. Advancers outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by a 3.55-to-1 ratio. On Nasdaq, a 2.63-to-1 ratio favored advancing issues. A total of 11.90 billion shares were traded on Friday, higher than the last 20-session average of 10.87 billion.

Investors Assess Economy’s Strength

Investors have been closely watching the earnings reports, which have been mixed so far this season. Worries shave been escalating about the economy’s strength as they wait for the Fed’s next meeting scheduled in February. The Fed is expected to go for another rate hike as hinted in its last meeting.

Investors have also been keenly observing Fed speakers' remarks for hints regarding the central bank's plans to tighten monetary policy in light of the unimpressive economic data released this week.

Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said on Friday that the time has come to "slow, but not halt" the pace of interest rate hikes after the Fed aggressively increased interest rates across the economy last year.

Wall Street lost momentum earlier this week on these worries but bounced back on Friday to keep intact the January rally. Friday’s rally was driven by some impressive quarterly reports from a batch of big tech companies.

Shares of Netflix, Inc. NFLX jumped 8.5% after the company reported better-than-expected subscriber growth in the fourth quarter.  However, the company missed earnings expectations. Netflix reported fourth-quarter 2022 earnings of $0.12 per share, missing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by $0.47 per share. Netflix has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Shares of other tech companies also rallied on Friday. Shares of Alphabet Inc. GOOGL gained 5.4%, while shares of Meta Platforms, Inc. META rose 2.4%.

Economic Data

Economic data released over the week was quite unimpressive. It wasn’t any different on Friday. The National Association of Realtors said existing home sales declined 1.5% in December to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.02 million units. This was higher than the consensus estimate of 3.95 million units.

Weekly Roundup

The Nasdaq closed 0.6% higher for the week. This was the index’s third-straight week of gains. However, the Dow and the S&P 500 recorded losses for the week. Although the S&P 500 recorded its best percentage gain on Friday since Jan 6, it ended the week 0.7% lower. The Dow finished the week down 2.7%.

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