The stock market closed mainly higher after lackluster action for most of the session, but leading stocks stood out Tuesday.
Innovator IBD 50 ETF (FFTY) rose 1.1%, easily beating the major indexes. Payment, consumer and real estate investment trust shares gave the IBD 50 much of its energy. That helped the index overcome an 11% plunge in Funko (FNKO). The company announced a secondary offering of 4 million shares.
The Nasdaq led with a 0.4% increase. Solar power, generic drug, retail and other Nasdaq-leaning industry groups were among Tuesday’s best.
The S&P 500 rose 0.3%, the fourth consecutive close with a price change of 0.3% or less. Energy stocks, which surged Monday, were among the weakest in today’s market. SPDR Energy ETF (XLE) fell 1.5%, erasing about half of Monday’s gain. The price of U.S. crude traded late Tuesday at $59 a barrel, down more than 6%.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.1%, with gains of at least 1% in McDonald’s (MCD), Boeing (BA), Procter & Gamble (PG) and American Express (AXP). Boeing shares are testing the 384 level, where there’s been resistance in the past few months.
The small-cap rally halted, at least for a day. The Russell 2000 fell 0.4%. After a strong first half of September, the small-cap benchmark is approaching resistance around the 1600 level.
Indexes were quiet ahead of Wednesday’s announcement on interest rate policy. The Federal Reserve is ending a two-day meeting. Odds of a quarter-point rate cut have dropped to about 47%. With a cut less certain, the market could be in for a surprise tomorrow.
Few Breakouts In Stock Market
With the broad market acting dull, there were few breakouts. Apogee Enterprises (APOG) broke out of a cup-without-handle base. Shares of the maker of aluminum and glass building products topped a 45.42 buy point in heavy trading after Apogee beat profit expectations.
Even as indexes hold up near highs, the number of breakouts is light, and even smaller when counting only those with heavy volume. The flip side is that quite a few leading stocks are forming bases, although many of those remain below their 50-day lines. Atlassian (TEAM), NMI Holdings (NMIH) and Epam (EPAM) are some examples.
But there’s a batch of top-rated stocks that are finding support at the 50-day moving average. SolarEdge (SEDG), which was added to IBD Leaderboard, is rising from last week’s pullback.
