Shares of technology companies rose as Treasury yields fell.
“Tech, more so than almost any other sector in the S&P 500, is a longer duration part of the market, so it’s going to be the most sensitive to monetary policy and even going further into real rates,” said Matt Stucky, senior portfolio manager at money manager Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Co.
The PHLX Semiconductor SOXX index rose sharply. The index is deep in the red for the year to date, as investors absorb the “aftershock” of the pandemic, but investors may already be preempting the turn of the cycle, said Mr. Stucky.
Cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which, during the summer, had acted as a white knight, buying out struggling middlemen in the highly volatile industry, was forced to sell itself to bitter rival Binance to avert a liquidity crisis of its own. The sudden onset of the crisis weighed on the shares of rival exchange Coinbase Global and on the price of bitcoin, which plunged by more than 10%.
The European Union’s competition watchdog said it would pursue an in-depth investigation into Microsoft’s planned $75 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, adding to the global scrutiny of whether the deal could harm competition in the videogame industry.
Write to Rob Curran at [email protected]
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