S&P 500 futures ticked downward 0.22% this morning, an indicator that some traders decided overnight to lock in their gains from yesterday’s close, when the index reached a new all-time high of 6,901. The peak was entirely predictable, given that U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell delivered a new dose of liquidity, as expected, via Wednesday’s 0.25% interest rate cut.
Nasdaq 100 futures were down 0.51% this morning, premarket, as traders picked winners and losers in the tech sector. Oracle lost another 1% overnight. It’s down more than 9% over the past five sessions after reporting revenue below expectations and capital expenditure above expectations. Alphabet (Google) by contrast, was up 0.26% in overnight trading.
The bigger picture is the fact that the S&P 500 has now risen 17.33% year to date.
The trigger for that came from Powell telegraphing 175 basis points of cuts since last year. But the markets have also been driven by retail investors—individuals, as opposed to financial institutions—buying into exchange-traded funds and individual tech stocks, according to Arun Jain and his colleagues at JPMorgan.
In the week up to Dec. 10, retail investors plowed $7.8 billion into stocks, above the $6.3 billion weekly average. “Retail investors continued to favor ETFs (+$6.3B) over single stocks (+$1.5B),” they told clients in a note seen by Fortune.
