While the Dow Jones and Nasdaq are trying to get out of the bear market, Russian telegram feeds are spinning “scams” on Gazprom stock.
The U.S. stock market is trying to rally on the back of strong retailer financials, hoping to break the almost two-month negative trend.
Discount retailers Dollar Tree (DLTR) +21.86% and Dollar General (DG) +13.7% ruled the floor in the S&P 500 Index, which gained 1.99%. E-commerce giant Amazon (AMZN) managed to add 4.03%. The SPDR S&P Retail ETF was also up more than 4%. The Nasdaq was able to pull back from the bottom by a respectable 2.68%.
Dow Jones rose for the fifth straight day
The main benchmark of Stock Market America gained 1.6% due to industry leaders: Boeing (BA) +4.65%, Home Depot (HD) +3.15%, Goldman Sachs Group (GS) +2.8%. Investor sentiment was helped by news of the Broadcom (AVGO) deal, which acquired cloud computing leader VMware (VMW) for nearly $61 billion
. Gazprom employees discuss the gas monopoly’s dividends. Photo: Yandex
Despite the emerging positive, we should not forget that in the first 100 trading days of this year, the S&P 500 is down 16.5 percent. This is the worst start to that period in the last half-century history and the fourth worst start to the year in the entire history of the index, LPL Financial analysts wrote.
On topic: A rebound in the Dow Jones does not mean a reversal. The U.S. stock market may repeat the movement of the seventies.
And recent trading sessions showed sharp drawdowns in some stocks after the publication of quarterly financial results, which confirmed investors’ fears about the impact of inflation on corporate earnings.
Memento mori
So the day before, social media giant Snap Inc. (SNAP) collapsed 43% causing a sell-off in shares of relevant companies, causing the Nasdaq Index to fall to its lowest level since November 2020. Prior to that, a sharp decline occurred in the securities of the industry’s biggest names, Walmart and Target (TGT).
According to FactSet, S&P 500 companies reporting first-quarter results could see the biggest negative price reaction in stocks to positive reports since 2011.
Oil Continues to Keep Oil Producers Tight
Black gold prices added to value amid overall market positivity. West Texas WTI exceeded $114 per barrel, while European benchmark Brent was trading at nearly $118. Nevertheless, shares of oil and gas companies, though trading in the green zone, remained below the market in percentage growth. ExxonMobil (XOM), Chevron (CVX), and ConocoPhillips (COP) only managed to add 0.35%, 0.67%, and 1.75% to their capitalization, respectively.
By topic: High oil prices may trigger a global recession
This condition can be interpreted as some kind of respite. Most securities are at local highs, and some are storming the historical values as well. To create a new growth impulse a temporary preparation is needed, which for the time being has given way to a rebound in the securities of other, more oversold sectors.
How telegram feeds caused Gazprom stock to plummet
Well, the most interesting events of Thursday unfolded on the best stock market in the world. The Moscow Exchange Index gained 3.2%, but that’s not the main point. The main events unfolded around the shares of the largest gas corporation of the world, whose shares gained over 9% as of the end of the trading session.
In the first half of the day, deliberately false news about the company’s cancellation of dividends for 2021 was spread all over the Telegram-channels. In a few minutes, around 1:30 p.m., Gazprom shares went down sharply, losing more than 12 percent of their capitalization. The matter went so far that RBC issued a rebuttal to the information contained in the distributed screenshot of the agency’s alleged page.
Closer to the close of trading, Gazprom issued an official release in which it officially confirmed the approval of the record dividends in full. In the end, good triumphed over evil. The securities of the gas monopoly surged just as sharply as they were falling, registering a 9% daily gain.
The losses of the sellers, according to Interfax, could be about 500 million rubles. And according to RIA Novosti, Russia’s Central Bank promises to examine the Russian market anomalies for insider trading. The main conclusion that can be drawn is that anonymous telegram channels with “insider information” supposedly from first-hand sources are regular dumpsters that should be treated with extreme skepticism.
On Topic: What is insider trading?
