Stocks Bounce Back From Lows Following Retail Earnings

In yet another turbulent day for Wall Street, stocks closed higher than session lows Wednesday amid positive retail earnings but a broad selloff in riskier assets.  

Tech stocks continued to slip Wednesday and the S&P 500 declined 1.6% at its session low. Retail earnings came in stronger with both Target and Walmart releasing higher-than-expected first quarter earnings. 

Target exceeded expectations with earnings rising 525%. Shares rose 5.4% following the earnings report. 

Walmart also beat on earnings and revenue, with e-commerce sales increasing 37% year-over-year, even as in person shopping resumed. 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 164 points lower after dipping as much as 587 points earlier in the session. 

Minutes from April’s Fed meeting revealed that officials may start to talk about easing off their current easy money policies, but only if economic data continues to improve. Investors still continue to worry over inflation and potential overheating in the market. 

Bitcoin plummeted as much as 30% to around $30,000 Wednesday before recovering around 10%. The largest digital currency traded around $40,000 at time of publication. 

Tech stocks linked to bitcoin saw the biggest declines Wednesday. Tesla lost 3%. The electric car company’s CEO, Elon Musk, is seen as a catalyst in bitcoin’s recent decline following comments he made on Twitter and the company’s announcement that they will no longer accept bitcoin as a form of payment. 

Business intelligence company Microstrategy, a firm with significant bitcoin on its corporate balance sheet, plummeted 9%. Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase fell 7% after experiencing outages earlier in the day as users attempted to buy the dip in digital assets.