It was quite a welcome home when the US stock market reopened this morning. Markets were eager to get back to trading, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.9%, its second-biggest single-day point increase ever.
The Nasdaq Composite, where many tech stocks are listed, rose 2.77%, having previously been the only index down since the start of 2020. All three indices closed the day up more than 4% and had their best day in months.
The optimism appears to be on hopes that the economy will start to return to some semblance of normalcy with the majority of states reopening their economies in some form.
Though the past few months have seen bourses around the globe plunge as the pandemic put a halt to studying and quarantining orders, it seems that investors are now ready to start charting a road map back to a functioning economy.
The biggest gains of the day came from tech names you’d expect—Netflix, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet—but it was the travel industry, as well as smaller companies, that made the largest strides.
Airline companies saw the biggest sector gains for the day, rising 17%, as investors start to prepare themselves for the return of air travel, while restaurants, both big and small, rose 13%, on hopes that dining indoors will soon be back to normal.
The jump in the markets today was a refreshing sign after so much economic turmoil over the past couple of months. Though it still remains to be seen what impact the current health pandemic will have on the economy and the markets in the months ahead, there is hope investors have turned an emotional corner and are now ready to move their assets into the market for a potential recovery.