After bouncing around in early trading Thursday, the stock market finally picked a direction: down.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 300 points, or 0.6%. The S&P 500 was down 0.6%. The Nasdaq Composite fell 1%.
The government shutdown entered its 37th day. Airline stocks were falling in the wake of a Federal Aviation Administration directive to reduce flight schedules starting Friday due to the shutdown.
Wall Street was also digesting the latest wave of quarterly earnings reports.
“We’re now in the back half of the Q3 earnings season, and probably the most consequential data point we’re seeing coming out of this season is continued strength in forward guidance,” writes Bespoke Investment Group co-founder Paul Hickey.
More than a thousand companies have reported results this earnings season, and 14% of those have raised their outlooks compared with 6% that lowered them. This week, of the 375 companies that reported results, the stocks have averaged a post-earnings gain of nearly 0.7%, Hickey writes.
“While it may feel like it has been a bad week for earnings with the way some of the key Tech and AI stocks have reacted to what looked like solid reports, the overall numbers this week have been quite strong,” Hickey writes.