Market Recap: Tuesday, March 31
Stocks ended Tuesday’s session lower, closing out the worst quarter for the Dow since 1987 and its first three-month start to the year on record. Yahoo Finance's Jen Rogers, Myles Udland, and Jared Blikre discuss.
Video Transcript
MYLES UDLAND: Let's take a look at the market right now. We've got about 80 seconds to go in this trading month and quarter, one that I think many investors would like to just write off, forget about it, and move on. Look at the major averages here. We are moving lower as we head towards the closing bell. All three majors are in the red. The Dow leading the way lower, off some 1.8% right now. The NASDAQ with the slimmest losses of just under one full percentage point. The S&P 500 splitting the difference there.
Just kind of looking at the levels right now, and we'll see where we shake up, but it does look like on a quarterly basis, we are going to have an S&P 500 close under 2,600. This coming during the same quarter when we saw record highs above 3,300. The Dow is going to be below 22,000. It was five weeks ago, maybe, that we were talking Dow 30,000. It seemed like a foregone conclusion.
And crude oil is going to settle out right around 20 bucks a barrel. Just amazing stuff across the board so. We'll have a lot of time in the days ahead to talk about the quarter that was for investors here, 10 seconds left until they can finally kiss this thing goodbye.
[CLOSING BELL]
All right, there was the closing bell of the month of March, follow closing bell of the first quarter of 2020. Feels like the longest quarter of many of our lives-- certainly the longest month in recent American memory. And of course, no traders down there on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange floor. Closed last Monday. We have since learned that a couple of folks in the building had contracted the coronavirus. Remains to be seen on the floor will reopen and really, when anything here in the States will get back to normal.
Let's take a look at the averages right now. We're getting some final settlements here, but it does look like the Dow gonna finish off some 400 points-- again, a 1/8% drop. The Russell 2000 also losing just under 2% today. Small caps have been a laggard here. We've seen bank stocks get absolutely crushed. And the Russell, ultimately, right, is the regional bank index. About 20% of the weighting of the Russell does come from the regional.
Let's bring in Jen Rogers right now, my co-host for the final hour of this program. And Jen, just for-- I don't know where you want to go with this, but I kind of joked earlier-- I can't imagine it ever not being March again. But the sun will rise tomorrow, and we will be able to say that we've made it out of the first quarter. Though, economically, I think the hardest days are clearly ahead, if not for the market.
JEN ROGERS: Definitely feels that way. I mean, March-- this day that we're ending on is not typical of what we just went through. So this is sort of a calmer phase, certainly, of the heady and panicky days that we had. In like a lion, out like a lamb here.
We've been talking about oil a lot and looking at XLE, but it's not that far off to go and look at the second worst sector decliner, and it is the banks, XLF. financials here are off some 30% year to date. That's also my favorite thing about the first quarter, Myles, you get to use just your year to date screeners. But XLF off almost 31%. Names like-- I've Wells Fargo here off some 44%. US Bancorp off almost 40%. Citigroup off almost 45%. Invesco, 46%. So while a lot of names in we focused on in the oil industry, financials have also had a really terrible quarter and I think it's worth paying attention to.
