Santa Claus rally underway? Dow’s best trading day since March

Completely wiping out the losses it racked up over the past week, the Dow Jones rose 1.87% on Monday - +647 points, to nearly 35,228. The S&P 500 is now back below 3% of its all-time highs set last month. The Nasdaq lagged behind the others, but still gained + 0.93% on the day (still 6% from its all-time highs), while the small-cap Russell 2000 has been raging since its inception. approaching correction territory, + 2.05% over the day to go. back above 2200.

A weekend of data and analytics eases investor concerns over the Omicron variant of Covid-19 a bit, including an 'encouraging' comment from Dr Fauci on how the global community has handled the new variant so far. now. This has led to a bargain hunt in the sectors that sold the heaviest on last week's Covid news. Carnival Cruise Lines CCL won today's S&P, + 8%. EXPE expedia made + 6.7% on Monday, as its CEO joked that "over time travelers will become oblivious to the news of Covid."

Energy also outperformed on Monday, with Saudi oil prices rising on projections that fuel consumption will return to pre-pandemic levels. That said, natural gas fell -11% on the day. Weather modeling in the United States and Europe now predicts much warmer temperatures than initially expected, pushing heating gas past previous thresholds. ExxonMobil XOM was up + 1.2% in Monday trading.

The Dow Jones closed from its intraday high of 777 points; it looked like a real expiration after a week of uncertain developments, a (verbal) tightening of the Fed's gears and a worse than expected jobs report from the US government weighed on the blue chip index. Boeing BA in the lead, + 3.7%, followed, perhaps surprisingly, by Intel INTC.

It was the takeover of Consumer Discretionary today, however, that's the big story: not just the cruise lines and travel sites, but the big hotels Marriott MAR was + 4.4% on Monday. If Expedia's CEO turns out to be prescient, consumers may well be looking beyond the coronavirus conditions in ways we hadn't dared to do most of the past year: vaccinations, boosters, easy access to tests and antiviral therapies are all weapons at our disposal - none of which we had as of December 2020. The jury is still out on how widespread and / or severe the Omicron variant may still be, but for now , market participants adopt a positive tone.

It's the season, anyway. It is too early to say that we are definitely entering a Santa Claus rally - these often occur directly after the holidays, rather than before / during them - but a strongly bullish start to the trading week does is not to be despised.

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