Wall St snowballs on retail sales cheer as S&P 500 hits record closing high



by SOURAV D

Wall St snowballs on retail sales cheer as S&P 500 hits record closing high
Wall St snowballs on retail sales cheer as S&P 500 hits record closing high

On Monday, all three key indices of Wall St. had scored lofty gains with Wall Street bellwether S&P 500 closing out the session in a record, as strong US holiday retail sales data had vindicated the economy’s resilience against an uptick in pandemic cases across the country while easing frets of Omicron-driven fiscal fallouts.

Nonetheless, travel and tourism stocks including airlines had borne the heaviest brunt in the day’s Wall Street as an Omicron associated wave of flight cancellations during a busy holiday season appeared to have dealt a major blow to travel stocks.

Nevertheless, as survey data from all over the globe had begun to unveil that Omicron cases would more likely to show mild symptoms with a much-lower chance of hospitalization in a vaccinated elderly demographics, worries over Omicron’s fiscal fallouts had eased.

Adding further impetus, a Mastercard Inc report had unveiled over the weekend that US holiday retail sales between November 1 and December 24 jumped as much as 8.5 per cent compared to the same time a year earlier. Nonetheless, as hundreds of flights were cancelled throughout the Christmas holidays, S&P 1500’s airline index shed 0.81 per cent, while cruise operators like of Royal Caribbean, Carnival Corp alongside Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings faltered between 1.5 per cent to 3.1 per cent.

Wall Street scales broad-based gains as US holiday retail sales jump

Citing statistics, in the day’s Wall Street closing bell, trade-sensitive Dow leapt 1.60 per cent to 35,492.70 and benchmark S&P 500 jumped 1.78 per cent to a record closing high of 4,649.23, while tech-heavy Nasdaq rose 1.34 per cent to 15,862.46.

Meanwhile, adding that the US capital markets were banking on a strong consumer spending over holiday quarter, a Chief investment officer and co-founder at Defiance ETFs in New York, Sylvia Jablonski Kampaktsis said, “The market is in this interesting place where we have a strong consumer, with spending up 8% year over year. Personal consumption makes up 70% of our GDP, and that remains flush”.

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