Good news or bad news? – Stocks can’t figure it out and struggle to find direction

Stocks opened slightly lower this morning and were choppy all morning.

But a lunch time rally helped erase morning losses.

The rally pushed the major indices into positive territory, but a dip in the last half hour left stocks mixed.

But while the S&P was flat and the DOW ended negative, the NASDAQ led the way (again). With a 6-day winning streak, the NASDAQ is on its longest winning streak this year.

Here’s where the major indices ended the day:

• The S&P finished slightly higher. Up a half point, the S&P ended at 2,930.
• The DOW ended 0.5% lower. Dropping 109 points the DOW closed at 24,222.
• The NASDAQ was up 0.8%. With a 71 point gain the NASDAQ finished at 9,192.

Crude Oil (CL) rallied early after Saudi Arabia said it will cut production by an extra 1 million barrels a day. But the move higher was short lived and  Crude Oil ended with a 3.3% loss $25.28 a barrel. 

Once again it was the “tech stock” show.

Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), Netflix (NFLX), and Alphabet (GOOGL) were all higher by 1.0%. Only Facebook (FB) of the FAANG stocks stayed below a 1.0% gain with just a 0.4% rally.

The World Health Organization (WHO) warned that the world is experiencing a second round of infections after countries that appeared to have coronavirus numbers under control are experiencing a rise in cases. 

Russia and India announced their largest daily confirmed case increase. And South Korea has ordered some bars and nightclubs to shut after a spike in cases. The global total according to John Hopkins University is now at 4.1 million, with 1.3 million case in the U.S. alone.

As a result, companies that would benefit the most from the reopening of the economy had a tough time today.