Post Market Wrap: April 15, 2024

Stocks retreated on Monday as rising yields overshadowed a strong earnings report from Goldman Sachs. Goldman finished today up 3%, but that was one of the very few stocks that were up today. Hot retail sales data overshadowed an initially optimistic market response to events in the Middle East over the weekend, where there were some hopes that the conflict would not escalate further. Oil dropped initially, but that all changed late in the morning because interest rates rose again, with the 10 year yield over 4.6%. That’s the highest levels. Since early November of last year, what happened? As a result? The market went down. The Dow Jones. Cholesterol average started up, but it closed the day down 248 points. That’s about 0.6%. That was the sixth straight losing day. We haven’t seen a losing St. like that since June. The S&P 500 slipped 1.2%. The NASDAQ composite was down 1.8%. Tech was especially weak today with Apple and NVIDIA down 2%. Salesforce led the whole tech sector down. It was down 7.2% after news came out that the company may be looking to acquire Informatica. It didn’t help that retail sales increased, oh, point, 7% in March. That was higher than expected. That’s good news because it indicates the consumer is still strong. But that added to the concerns about persistent inflationary pressures. That’s the big issue for the markets right now. For CNBC Business news, I’m Bob Pisani at the New York Stock Exchange.