Overall it has been another green week for the major indices as the S&P 500, Dow Jones, and Nasdaq all continue to climb towards all-time high levels despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In particular the tech-heavy Nasdaq continued its upwards trajectory towards the 12,000 basis points bench-mark as the index hit its fifth straight positive day on Wednesday and the 39th new all-time high set this year already. Likewise for the S&P 500 which recorded its 18th new all-time high set this year, and has now bounced back off of its lows in late-March by nearly 60%. Finally, the Dow Jones bounced back after a couple of negative days but remains slightly in the red overall so far this year.
The Dow is where we will start as a recent shakeup for the bench-mark index has shown how much times have changed in 2020. The blue-chip Dow used to be the standard by which the American economy was measured but recently the Nasdaq and S&P have taken over. Leaving the Dow in the most recent swap is Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM) which has been a staple of the Dow since 1928, Raytheon Technologies (NYSE:RTX), and pharmaceutical giant Pfizer (NYSE:PFE). Taking their places in the Dow will be Honeywell (NYSE:HON), Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ:AMGN), and Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM). While fundamentally nothing should really change for these stocks, there has been a phenomenon of stocks receiving an initial bump when being added to the Dow as was witnessed when Nike (NYSE:NKE), Visa (NYSE:V), and Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) joined the index in 2013. The most recent shakeup comes on the heels of a stock split by tech behemoth Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) which will affect the price-weighted measure of the Dow due to the lower stock price.
The electric vehicle industry was back in the news as industry leader Tesla ($163.59|0.90%) hit another new all-time high closing the trading session at $2,153.17 per share after gaming another 6.42%. The other stock split that is about to take place at the end of August will see Tesla shares diluted 5 for 1, which at current levels would be over $430 per share. China carmaker Nio (NYSE:NIO) continued its surge as well, finally breaking through the $20 price barrier after a Wall Street analyst upgrade earlier in the week. Another Chinese maker is throwing its hat in the ring as upstart company XPeng raised $1.5 billion in a U.S. initial public offering.
Finally, some more tech news as Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) hit new all-time highs on Wednesday barrelling through the $300 price barrier after more analyst upgrades based on its push into e-Commerce, partnering with stock market darling Shopify (NYSE:SHOP) as well as industry newcomer and Shopify rival BigCommerce (NASDAQ:BIGC). BigCommerce was up over 30% again on Wednesday after a breakout on Tuesday, while Shopify added another 5% on the news. If this relationship continues, look for all three of these companies to be long-term winners with plenty of slices of pie available in the e-Commerce space.
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