By Yasin Ebrahim
Investing.com – The S&P 500 rose to an intraday record high Wednesday as cyclical stocks including energy and industrials were boosted by signs of an improving employment markets ahead of the monthly jobs report due later this week.
The S&P 500 rose 0.20% to a record intraday level of 4,301.90. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.65%, or 222 points, the Nasdaq was down 0.1%.
Private payrolls increased 692,000, beating the consensus estimates of 600,000, as the reopening of the economy drove up job gains in the leisure and hospitality sector.
“The services jobs was very strong in the ADP report, which is consistent with the reopening in the U.S.,” John Ragard, senior portfolio manager, small cap equity at Spouting Rock Asset Management told Investing.com in an interview on Wednesday. "Airlines are hiring more pilots, hotel occupancy and hotel rates are increasing […] there's clearly a need for more people to come back into the services sector, especially into the travel and transportation industry.”
The bullish ADP numbers, while not completely correlated with the monthly payrolls report, does bode well for Friday’s jobs report, which will garner added attention following softer reports in April and May. Economists forecast the U.S. economy created about 600,000 jobs in June.
Cyclical stocks, which move in tandem with the economy, were higher, led by energy as oil prices rose ahead of the OPEC meeting on Thursday. Investors are betting that energy demand will outstrip supply ahead of a busy period of travel over the summer months.
“It is emerging that the unexpectedly robust recovery of demand will see a shortfall of up to 2 million barrels per day on the market in the second half of the year,” Commerzbank (DE:CBKG) said in a note.
Financials continued to add to recent gains, with major Wall Street banks trending higher.
Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and Citigroup (NYSE:C) were up more than 1% while Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) rose about 0.8%.
Tech, meanwhile, took a breather from its recent melt-up even as bond yields remained sluggish amid expectations that inflation and growth may have peaked.
Google-parent Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) and Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) were mostly lower.
“The bond markets are telling us that growth is decelerating [amid] some recent inflation data points that have been relatively soft." Ragard added. "I'm not saying that we won't still see some surprising inflation numbers, month to month [...] but I do believe that the growth rates have peaked."
In other news, Chinese ride-sharing company Didi rose 5%, but had jumped more than 19% after making its public debut Wednesday.