Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on December 7, 2023.
Brendan Mcdermid | Portal
The Dow Jones Industrial Average traded higher on Thursday as investors sought to recover from a slump earlier in the year.
The 30 stocks rose 180 points, or 0.5%, recouping losses of nearly 300 points from the previous day. The S&P 500 rose 0.2%. The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite, however, remained largely unchanged.
Mega-cap technology stocks like Apple are underperforming to start the year as stretched valuations and uncertainty over when the Federal Reserve will begin cutting interest rates have investors worried that markets have become too optimistic.
Apple shares have fallen more than 5% this week. Shares of the tech giant fell 1.4% on Thursday following a downgrade by Piper Sandler, two days after Barclays also cut its rating on the name.
Wall Street's recent performance stands in stark contrast to how the market ended 2023. The S&P 500 ended last year up more than 24% while also enjoying its best weekly winning streak since 2004.
But Steven Wieting, chief investment strategist at Citi Global Wealth, doesn't think the current decline will have much long-term impact on the market.
“Whether this all lasts, I wouldn't really see the last few days as important,” he told CNBC. “It’s really a statistical coin toss.”
In fact, Wieting thinks the S&P 500 could end the year around the 5,000 mark, which would mean 6% upside from here.