U.S. Market Review

The Dow and S&P 500 are both trading near record highs heading into the lunch hour, while the Nasdaq has come under pressure due to quadruple witching day on Wall Street, which is the simultaneous quarterly expiration of stock-index futures contracts, single-stock futures, and options on stock-index futures and individual stocks, which often spurs higher volumes. There are also several S&P funds that are rebalancing today, so both liquidity and volatility are expected to be high in the afternoon trading session.

At noon on Wall Street the Dow Industrials are trading up by %, while the S&P 500 is holding onto a % gain, and the Nasdaq has slipped % lower.

Early gains came for U.S. equity markets following perceived improvements in the trade relations between the U.S. and China. Negotiators have been meeting on Thursday and today, and early Friday there was a report of President Trump exempting hundreds of Chinese products from tariffs. That exemption list is expected to be published later on Friday.

Shares of Apple gained 0.5% in early trade, but are flat heading into the lunch hour as its new iPhone 11s go on sale for the first time today.

Shares of Netflix are getting hammered lower, falling 6% today and on track for a third consecutive losing session after falling 2.4% and 1.7% on Wednesday and Thursday respectively. Investors are bailing out after Netflix’s CEO said to expect “tough competition” from Disney and Apple.

Markets are also seeing crude trading higher today, and gold is on track to post a weekly gain and snap three consecutive weekly losses.