Investors clearly didn’t want to go into the upcoming three-day weekend holding onto financial stocks. The Dow fell a little more than 200 points, led by a steep fall in shares of JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and other big banks.
The Dow closed 0.6% lower on Friday. The index is off nearly 1% over the past five days and has fallen 1.2% so far this month.
The S&P 500 edged slightly higher and the Nasdaq rose 0.6% — but both indexes still dropped modestly for the week. So far in 2022, the S&P 500 is down 2% while the tech-heavy Nasdaq has slid 5%.
A weak retail sales report for December didn’t help matters on Wall Street. Consumer spending surprisingly fell during that key holiday shopping month, raising concerns that runaway inflation is finally taking a toll on the economy.
But while investors have been shunning big techs like Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT) and Tesla (TSLA) this year, bank stocks were a bright spot for the market — until Friday. Investors were disappointed by JPMorgan Chase’s nearly 15% drop in earnings from the fourth quarter of 2020.
Shares of JPMorgan Chase (JPM) were down 6%. Fellow financials (and Dow components) Goldman Sachs (GS) — which reports earnings next Tuesday — and American Express (AXP) each fell about 3% too.
Citigroup (C) and BlackRock (BLK), which both reported earnings Friday, were also lower. Wells Fargo (WFC) was the bright spot for banks, rallying after posting better-than-expected results.
More big banks, including Bank of America (BAC), Morgan Stanley (MS) and Truist (TFC), will report their results in next week’s holiday-shortened trading session. Earnings are also on tap from consumer products king Procter & Gamble (PG), airlines United (UAL) and American (AAL) and streaming giant Netflix (NFLX).
The stock market is closed Monday in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
