U.S. equities surged higher on Thursday, pushing the Dow Jones Industrial Average up and over the 24,000 level for the first time. The catalyst was word irascible Senator John McCain (R-AZ) would support the GOP’s tax reform legislation.
While there are a number of other GOP senators that have voiced concern with the bill as written, this fueled hope tax cuts could actually happen before the end of the year.
But it was far from a “clean” rise, with a number of oddities in play from a rise in the CBOE Volatility Index to weakness in small-cap stocks and the jagged selling in Treasury bonds. This feels like a blow-off top.
In the end, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1.4%, the S&P 500 gained 0.8%, the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.7% and the Russell 2000 gained 0.1% after dipping into negative territory at one point.
Treasury bonds weakened, the dollar outperformed, gold lost 0.7%, and crude oil gained 0.2% as OPEC announced a nine-month extension of the supply-cut agreement hammered out last year.
