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Market Recap: Monday, August 24

The markets closed in the green with the NASDAQ reaching a record close as investors reacted to positive development in coronavirus treatments. The Final Round panel discusses the latest.

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: Welcome back to "The Final Round." I'm Seana Smith. We have just under a minute left in the trading day. And stocks holding on to gains. We got a bit of a rally here in the final hour or two of the trading day.

The Dow now up nearly 350 points. That's a gain of over 1% for the Dow. S&P also up almost 1%, up 9/10 of a percent, pushing above that 3,400 level. That was a level that we were watching at the end of the week last week, so quickly breaking through that today. And then the NASDAQ up another half of a percent as we see the tech trade taking a little bit of a breather, but the NASDAQ up just around a half of a percent, above 11,300.

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[BELL RINGING]

And that does it for the trading day today. Again, the Dow closing up just over 360 points, it looks like. S&P up just around 1%. And the NASDAQ closing in on 11,400.

Taking a look at the Dow, the biggest winners in the Dow today-- Boeing, Dow Inc., and also American Express. Those three stocks leading the way in the Dow. The S&P leaders, a lot of those names tied to the reopening trade. Taking a look at some of those, Carnival up over 10%, American airlines up over 10% today, and United also a big gainer, up over 9%. And the NASDAQ, I also want to quickly mention, hitting an all-time high, a new record earlier today, again, closing very close to 11,400.

The sector action is definitely worth mentioning, seeing some rotation to start the week. It's a little bit more at a broader-based rally than what we've seen recently. Both the cyclical names and also those growth stocks are in the mix today. Energy and banks are among the top performers, as well as materials and even industrials outperforming the tech sector.

And that's a little bit of a change of pace, something that we haven't seen now for quite some time. Then also, the news on the coronavirus front, especially in regard to treatment, that, of course, is helping to boost investor sentiment. And that is one of the reasons why some of those reopening trade names, like some of the airlines, cruise lines, as well as hotels are in the green today.

Well, joining me for the next hour, Myles Udland, he's back with us. He'll be the co-host for the next 60 minutes. We missed you a lot, Myles. But we're also joined by Rick Newman, Akiko Fujita, Jared Blikre.

So Myles, you took just over a week off, kept away a little bit from the market. So what do you make of today's action?

MYLES UDLAND: Nothing changes, right? Stocks go up. Yeah, leadership changes slightly. But, I mean, I think-- I was trying to get myself back up to speed over the weekend. And it seemed that everyone was mad that Apple kept going up so much. I mean, Apple crossed $2 trillion market cap last week.

We had S&P hit record highs last week. We have the Dow at its best level since late February. It seems that the Dow is on track to eventually eclipse its prior record highs. And it really, I guess, kind of continues the theme that we talked about so much through the entire summer and that we sort of-- before I left for this short break, I remember talking with you and Jared about what we've said for months, which is that this market is headed to record highs. What happens next? We'll see.

But now we've gotten to that point. I think maybe the election can kind of put some uncertainty into this trading environment. I think most people assume it will, even though so far, it hasn't really done-- no political news has really changed the market trajectory overall. And so I think we are sort of where the market told us we would be four, six weeks ago. So again, I think it's kind of the more things have seemed to change in this market, the more they stay the same.

What I will say, though, and I think that it's something I'm close to just kind of writing I was completely wrong, I'm surprised that the market hasn't kind of been upset by the fact that there's no stimulus, that that doesn't really seem to be happening at all. There's no movement on that. Now Congress will come back in session in September. Maybe something gets done then.

But I think that we're now just probably going to let these benefits expire. And people who are out of work are just-- they're just out of work. And they'll get whatever their state unemployment is. And I'm just surprised that the reaction to that has mostly been OK, yeah, good luck.

SEANA SMITH: Yeah, Myles, I do agree with you, because we were talking about the fact-- I mean, leading up to the July deadline, the end of July, that we were talking about the fact how important this is for the market, how that is one of the things that investors were closely watching. So I am, too, a little bit surprised at the fact that investors have been able to shrug that off. Because when you take into account how many Americans are still out of work and how much of that is needed in order just to keep the spending here on track, at least in the short term.

So I wonder whether or not if we start to see a little bit more weak data on the econ, if we'll see that creep into the markets. But at least the for now--

RICK NEWMAN: Seana, [INAUDIBLE] on that?

SEANA SMITH: [INAUDIBLE] doesn't seem to be a big concern, at least for investors, at the moment. And I want to bring in Jared Blikre on these market highs, because Jared, you've been sending through some of these numbers since the close. NASDAQ and S&P both closing at a record. Consumer discretionary, communication services, technology sectors also at a record. So my question to you is what levels are you looking at, and just in terms of whether or not this momentum to the upside still has room to run?

JARED BLIKRE: Well, I look at internals and momentum. And both of those are a little bit concerning right now. So internals, I'll look at the advance decline line of the S&P 500, of the New York Stock Exchange. And it had, as of last Friday, been diverging from the record highs that we've been seeing. Now it jumped up today. But we're going to want to see those advanced decline lines get to record highs to confirm what we're seeing in the indices.

And then also, with some of the other metrics, like volume and momentum, we did reach these record highs on lesser momentum. So a lot of times, that can create a system-- a certain divergence unless that momentum is resumed to the upside. And that has yet to be seen. So it's probably going to play out for the rest of this week.

I've said oftentimes that the market doesn't really get started until Tuesday morning around 10:00 AM. That's when you get the true trend of the market. So it could be that we get squeezed to the upside a little bit more before kind of heading down for the week.

And I'm not expecting a big correction, or even saying that has to happen. But right now, it would be healthy to get some kind of a shakeout here and get the bears excited again before going higher. So levels, I'm looking at the level of interest in the market and the broad participation.

SEANA SMITH: Yeah, that certainly is interesting, at least to note in today's action, the broader participation in industrials, materials, and some of those more cyclical sectors, like financials, getting a boost today.