The Dow Jones Industrial Average soared to a new record closing high on Tuesday as market participants rotated out of technology names into stocks with lower valuations.
The 30-stock index rallied about 560 points to close at a record 47,927.96 as investors bought blue chip healthcare names such as Merck
Impacting big tech on Tuesday, investor Michael Burry, known for his famous bet on the financial market in "The Big Short," accused some of Wall Street's largest tech names of understating depreciation in their accounting to boost their profits from the year's artificial intelligence rally. Burry singled out Meta Platforms
"Understating depreciation by extending useful life of assets artificially boosts earnings -- one of the more common frauds of the modern era," the Scion Asset Management founder said in a post on X late Monday. "Massively ramping capex through purchase of Nvidia chips/servers on a 2-3 [year] product cycle should not result in the extension of useful lives of compute equipment. Yet this is exactly what all the hyperscalers have done."
Fresh labor market data also harmed investor outlooks on Tuesday, as payrolls processing firm ADP estimated that U.S. private employers cut an average of 11,250 jobs over the past four weeks. ADP Chief Economist Nela Richardson said the preliminary total suggests "that the labor market struggled to produce jobs consistently during the second half of the month. ADP has offered market participants only a snapshot of recent job market activity as the ongoing federal government shutdown continues to halt economic releases from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The U.S. Senate passed a bill on Monday to reopen the government by a vote of 60-40, effectively sending the bill to the House of Representatives for a vote this week. The deal in its current state would fund the government through the end of January. The shutdown is currently the longest in U.S. history at 42 days.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned on Tuesday that the shutdown's impact on air travel could continue even after the government reopens, telling reports at Chicago O'Hare International Airport that "we're going to wait to see the data on our end before we take out the restrictions in travel." Major airlines including Delta Air Lines
Elsewhere, Advanced Micro Devices
"That is what we see as our potential given the customer traction, both with the announced customers, as well as customers that are currently working very closely with us," Su said at AMD's first investor day since 2022.
