Stock Market News Today: Dow Gains 150 Points, Oil Prices Slip Ahead of Fed Minutes – The Wall Street Journal

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Stocks opened in the green, turned lower in morning trading, and then finished Wednesday higher—though they fluctuated a bit after the release of minutes from December's Fed meeting. Read Wednesday's full daily markets roundup here.
Salesforce was up after announcing big layoffs. Coinbase rose after news that it settled with New York state's Department of Financial Services. Oil's selloff continued. And Tesla regained some ground.
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Could 2023 be a comeback year for the global bond market? So far, there are signs investors are once again excited about fixed income.
Global bonds have rallied to start the year, with the latest jump on Wednesday coming amid fresh signs that inflation is easing in some large economies. France on Wednesday reported an unexpected decline in the annual pace of inflation in December, a day after Germany said consumer-price growth slowed last month.
European government bonds rallied and U.S. 10-year Treasury yields fell to 3.7% from 3.791% a day earlier. Yields fall as prices rise. They had been at 3.826% on Friday, Dec. 30.
Most analysts have come to agree that inflation has likely peaked, but that there will be a recession in rich nations during the first two quarters of 2023—albeit a mild one. It isn’t a cheerful consensus, but it does offer a clear investment strategy, writes Heard's Jon Sindreu. If a central-bank pivot in the face of an economic downturn is nigh, then buying bonds makes sense, he added.
There was no strong sign of a pivot just yet in the minutes of the Fed's meeting last month. Federal Reserve officials raised concerns at their meeting that investors’ optimism that the central bank might end its rate rises could make it more difficult to slow the economy and combat high inflation.
Elsewhere in the market, U.S. stocks wobbled for much of Wednesday, ending up for the day as traders weighed fresh economic data. The S&P 500 rose 0.8% while the Dow Jones Industrial Average increased 0.4%, or 133 points. The tech-focused Nasdaq Composite Index climbed 0.7%.
Natural-gas futures for February delivery recovered somewhat, adding 4.6% on Wednesday after dropping 11% on Tuesday. A sudden thaw across the Northern Hemisphere has melted down natural-gas prices, upending dire forecasts of energy shortages and sinking Vladimir Putin‘s plan to squeeze Europe this winter.
This analysis comes from the Journal's Heard on the Street team. Subscribe to their free daily newsletter here.
General Electric completed the spinoff of its healthcare business, which began trading Wednesday as GE HealthCare Technologies.
“Once they are separate they will get a new set of investors,” said Scott Davis, an industrial analyst and CEO of Melius Research. He said overall investor interest in GE has been low going into the breakup, but the spinoffs may change that.
GE's own shares, which trade on the New York Stock Exchange, rose 5.9% to $70.20, giving it a market capitalization of roughly $76.7 billion. The stock had closed Tuesday near $85 a share, before adjusting for the split, with a market cap of about $91 billion.
GE issued GE HealthCare shares to existing shareholders and will retain about 20% equity in the spinoff.
After the GE HealthCare split, most investor attention will remain on Aerospace, said David Giroux, chief investment officer of T. Rowe Price Investment Management, which held 2.1% of the GE shares outstanding at the end of September.
Santa Claus came after all.
The S&P 500 rose 0.8% during the 2022-2023 Santa Claus rally period—the last five trading sessions of a year and first two of the next year.
That marks seven straight Santa Claus rallies for the index.
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Stocks pared gains but still ended the day higher, after Federal Reserve meeting minutes indicated the central bank is still committed to raising interest rates.
Read our full markets roundup here
A selloff in oil continued Wednesday as concerns about Chinese demand that weighed on crude markets in the final weeks of 2022 have continued pushing down prices in the new year.
Warmer-than-average temperatures in recent weeks have cut demand for fuels used to heat homes across the U.S. and Europe. But traders and analysts attribute most of the choppiness in oil markets to China's pandemic reopening, which has led to surging infection rates and a months-long contraction in the country's manufacturing sector.
At the same time, Beijing has bumped up oil refineries' export quotas in what analysts say is a bid to capitalize on discounted prices for Russian crude. That move could allow Chinese refineries to reap greater profit margins for crucial products such as diesel, said Daniel Ghali, a commodity strategist at TD Securities.
By pumping such exports onto the global market, he added, it also serves to reduce demand for oil among refineries in other countries.
Shares of cruise operators gained in afternoon trading, outpacing a broader rise across the three major indices.
Shares of Carnival rose 9%. Royal Caribbean Group stock rose 7% while shares of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings floated almost 5% higher.
The gains came after Carnival said it would raise a couple of prices for customers of its namesake cruise line.
Investors are closely watching the cruise lines' efforts to command higher rates while working to once again fill ships after the Covid-19 pandemic brought the industry to a standstill.
Tesla shares attempted a modest comeback Wednesday following a selloff that dragged the stock to its lowest closing value since August 2020.
Shares recently rose about 5%. On Tuesday, Tesla stock tumbled 12% after it reported disappointing vehicle-delivery figures.
At Tuesday's closing level, the electric-car maker has wiped out all of its gains since it was added to the S&P 500 in late 2020, its shares off 74% from its November 2021 peak.
Lately, concerns about vehicle demand have dragged the stock lower. Chief Executive Elon Musk's involvement with Twitter has also frustrated investors. Now, concerns are growing about Tesla's profit margins, too.
Still, Wall Street analysts see more upside for Tesla. FactSet's average price target was above $250 as of Wednesday morning, suggesting the stock could more than double from Tuesday's close.
Many longtime Tesla bulls also remain optimistic about the stock. Individual investors bought a net $178 million or so of Tesla stock Tuesday, according to Vanda Research data. Meanwhile, Cathie Wood of ARK Investment Management snapped up more Tesla stock amid Tuesday's tumble.
There’s a rally in heavily-shorted cryptocurrency-connected stocks.
Silvergate Capital's stock is up more than 23% Wednesday, on pace for one of its biggest percentage gains in a year. Bitcoin miner Marathon Digital Holdings is up about 22%.
And exchange Coinbase is up 12% after it agreed to pay $100 million to settle accusations by New York state's Department of Financial Services that it allowed customers to open accounts without conducting sufficient background checks.
Meanwhile, bitcoin was recently 1.2% above its level 24 hours earlier, according to CoinDesk, while ether was 3.8% higher.
Silvergate’s stock is rallying despite a letter federal banking regulators released on Tuesday warning banks about getting too close to the crypto world. The bank’s shares are down 85% over the last year, spiraling since the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX empire. There are concerns about the bank’s ties to Mr. Bankman-Fried as well as its future business prospects in a dark crypto winter.
Those concerns have led to a huge spike in its short interest, which is now over half of its traded shares, according to data from FactSet.
Shares of Credit Acceptance dropped after the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and New York State Office of the Attorney General filed a joint lawsuit against the major subprime auto lender.
"We believe the complaint is without merit and intend to vigorously defend ourselves in this matter," Credit Acceptance said.
The stock was recently off about 12%.
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Shares of Salesforce rose in Wednesday trading after the business-software company said it would cut its workforce by 10% and scale back on office space.
The company's stock was recently up 3.2% as broader markets moved higher. It's down more than 40% over the last 12 months, according to FactSet.
"The company clearly overbuilt out its organization over the past few years along with the rest of the tech sector with a slowdown now on the horizon," wrote Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives, who has an outperform rating on the shares.
Read the Heard on the Street's take on the news here: "Salesforce is hardly the only tech company to have overshot in its postpandemic planning," Dan Gallagher wrote. "But the correction still comes at an especially painful time for the cloud software pioneer."
More Salesforce coverage from The Journal:
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Stocks lost a bit of steam Thursday afternoon after the release of the minutes of the Federal Reserve's December meeting, which noted the U.S. central bank's commitment to future interest-rate increases and indicated that cuts in 2023 were unlikely.
Read Thursday's full daily markets roundup here.
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A suite of equity ETFs that say they mitigate investor losses topped Cathie Wood's ARK Investment Management in total assets under management.
Innovator Capital Management—the largest provider of buffer ETFs—manages $11.1 billion of client funds as of Tuesday, up from $6 billion at the start of 2022. That edged out ARK Investment Management after its assets fell precipitously to $10.6 billion from $30.4 billion a year earlier.
Rising interest rates and stock-market volatility allowed Innovator to give investors more income potential through its ETFs.
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