Market Recap: Wednesday, October 14

Stock losses accelerated as a prospects of a stimulus package before the election dimmed even further. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Wednesday afternoon that achieving a stimulus deal and advancing any measures through Congress before the November election would be “difficult.” The Final Round panel breaks down what this means for markets

Video Transcript

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SEANA SMITH: And that does it for the trading day today. Welcome back to "The Final Round." I'm Seana Smith. We saw some selling across the board today. The Dow swinging more than 300 points, closing off just around 160 points. S&P up just around 6/10 of a percent, and the NASDAQ was the big decline of the three major averages, off just around 8/10 of a percent. We have a couple of big drivers moving the markets today.

Of course, first of all, the stimulus talks. They don't seem to be going anywhere at this point. We had Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin saying that a deal before Election Day would be tough at this point. And if you take a look at the S&P action today, you can see that this is still very important to investors, because we were basically flat until mid-morning when Mnuchin made those comments, and of course, we saw the S&P turn negative, so that, of course, just points the fact that investors are still holding out hope that we could possibly get some deal before Election Day, although the odds of that don't look too great at this point. We also, of course, have third quarter earnings.

Bank earnings are in focus today, and they are not helping things, at least when you take a look at Bank of America and Wells Fargo. Both of those stocks selling off today with Bank of America off just around 5%. Wells Fargo off nearly 6%. And I think because of that cautious tone that we're still hearing from a lot of the banks, just in terms of where we are or what we could expect going forward in the economic recovery and of course in this environment where we have very low interest rates.

Goldman, on the other hand, they did have a blowout report. That stock holding on to small gains today. And then, of course, we have to mention the latest one it comes the coronavirus case count. More than 20 states reporting record numbers of new coronavirus cases in recent days. So that, of course, is weighing on investor sentiment just a little bit. The selling action, like I mentioned earlier, was pretty broad based when you take a look at the sectors.

Eight of the 11 sectors today closing in the red. A lot of those mega cap names under pressure. Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft are among those big names here declining today. Sector wise, worst performers-- communication services, consumer discretionary and real estate. On the flip side, energy leading the market higher, along with industrials and materials.

I want to bring in my co-host Jen Rogers, as she's still with us. We also have Yahoo Finance's Editor in Chief Andy Serwer, Rick Newman and Akiko are here joining the conversation. Jen, let me just go to you first here. What do you think of the moves we saw today, because clearly when you take a step back and look at what's moving the markets, stimulus is still playing a part, and then, of course, we also have the earnings.

JEN ROGERS: Stimulus is definitely paying a part, and I know I'm supposed to say that that is the answer and that is what I'm paying attention to, but honestly, I don't know, I am more focused right now on the bank earnings. And if you look at the S&P 500, you look at Wells, and you look at Bank of America, get under the hood there, it's not great. I know we're going to get some more details on that, but a lot of ink was spilled on the Goldman Sachs numbers, and look, they knocked it out of the park. They crushed the estimates, and bond trading is back and all of that. But I do think, especially with Dimon's comments yesterday, we did temper some of the excitement. Banks are incredibly important. They are a really good read on what is happening on the economy. They are telling us something. We can't get a straight answer out of Washington, but we know what the banks are telling us,