Market Recap: Thursday, April 2

Stocks ended higher at the close of a volatile session, as investors digested new economic data including the U.S. Labor Department’s report showing weekly unemployment insurance claims far exceeded expectations.

Video Transcript

MYLES UDLAND: Kind of an odd day in this market, but then, again, it seems like they're all of days at this point. Again, we got about 10 seconds to go here before the closing bell wrapping up trading on this Thursday.

[TRADING BELL]

Except this gentleman and a few others down on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Though, we did hear some commentary from executives at the NYSE today. They're still committed to reopening the floor at some point, and I think probably one of the institutions that is well positioned to see humans return sooner rather than later given the procedures they had in place before kind of shutting down the floor.

We talked so much about, well, where's the sports world going? Well, I think the trading world might see some humans in play probably sooner than a lot of other areas. I want to bring my co-host now, Jen Rogers, for a little bit more on today's market action.

And Jen, you've talked a lot about the big numbers here today, the superlatives we're seeing in the market energy. Energy, XLE, up some 9%. But if you back that out, I actually am impressed by the modesty perhaps of what we've seen in the stock market today. All 11 sectors in the S&P in the green today. And outside of Energy and utilities, none of them moving more than 3%.

JEN ROGERS: It is a little modest compared to what we've gotten used to. I will give you that. I frankly can not stop looking at the jobless claims number. It is just so outsized, and it is absolutely without precedent. Just the size, the scale, the velocity.

And why I think it's so important, it goes back to the Call of The Day that we did in the three o'clock hour. We did one on ServiceNow. Myles, I don't think we've ever done a Call of The Day on ServiceNow. Have we? No.

MYLES UDLAND: I don't think so. I mean-- It's OK. ServiceNow's a great company.

JEN ROGERS: It is.

MYLES UDLAND: That's usually a space for like Netflix and Tesla.

JEN ROGERS: Yes, that's like the big tickers. But what I'm taking away from it is that ServiceNow is a SAS play, software, technology. Everybody is going to need that. It's the cloud that trade is still on, but even a company like that is going to be hit by these huge labor disruptions that we are seeing. Nothing is safe, and that's really what you need to try and figure out when you have no idea what the timeline for this is.

MYLES UDLAND: Yeah, and speaking of that timeline, you know, Andy Serwer, we've got just a growing sense. But I think still an incomplete sense of what exactly this recession is going to look like, and I think it still challenges investors. And we were highlighting. Just a few moments ago, we had Lori Calvasina with RBC on, and she's talking about their investor survey, where they have a surprisingly high level of bullishness around this market. Meanwhile, we've got 10 million people filing for unemployment insurance in three weeks.

ANDY SERWER: Yeah, I mean, I was just thinking. One of these glasses, like is it half full or half empty? I mean, first of all, the great savior of the US equities market, Mohammed Bin Salman. You know, you don't say that very often, but thank you, sir, today for making the stock market go up. Because it sure wasn't Jen Rogers' 6.6 million jobless claims that made the market go up today. That's for sure, which is a double off of last weeks.

One thing, I don't think we're going to see a double next week. If we do, that would be really bad. So talking to a lot of people today about the situation, and you know, we are starting to see divergences of opinion in a huge way. I mean, I was talking to the Mooch actually, and he was pointing out to me that there's a lot of stuff that's actually working in the US economy.

And maybe we're taking a little bit for granted, like the food industries strained and the supply chain. But that's still working. The electric utilities, the internet's working. The banking system is working, which is something maybe we're not accentuating enough. And there have been some stains and questions there. But so far, everything is fine there. Oil and gas, you know, the drillers, the EP people, that's tough.

But you're still getting gas at the gas station. So while we shut down 2/3 of the economy, 1/3 third it's still running or something like that. But then there's the question of the further implications of COVID-19, and that things are really not going to be back to normal in terms of the health of the citizens of this country and the real economy for possibly another year until really, we get the vaccine. And people start to get vaccinated, and that would suggest more pain for the market. So you know, it depends how you look at that glass, and that's going to be the big question going forward.