It was another day of sell off jitters that brought all the indexes down as much as yesterday when Mnuchin commented that a stimulus deal before the election was unlikely. The good news is that the stimulus has already been priced into the market so it’s really just a question of how much and when. But there remains great confidence that it will happen. B of A, Wells Fargo and United Health all dropped today with Q3 but despite that the Q3 earnings forecast has again been upgraded from a 19.6% loss yesterday to a 19.0% loss today. After only a handful of companies reporting, the forecast has already been upgraded from 21% to 19% or nearly 10 percent. Volume remains below average at 8.2 billion. 

WED  OCTOBER 14, 2020  4:09 pm

Wall Street ends down after Mnuchin dims stimulus hopes

By Noel Randewich

DJ: 28,679.81  -157.71        NAS: 11,863.90  -12.36       S&P: 3,511.93  -22.29      10/13

DJ: 28,514.00  -165.81        NAS: 11,768.73  -95.17       S&P: 3,488.67  -23.26      10/14

(Reuters) - Wall Street finished weaker on Wednesday, led lower by Amazon and Microsoft, as investors lost hope that a U.S. fiscal stimulus would be approved before the presidential election in November.  Downbeat comments from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin that a deal would not likely be made before the vote added to fragile sentiment following a mixed bag of quarterly earnings reports from major Wall Street lenders.  “At this point getting something done before the election and executing on that would be difficult, just given where we are and the level of detail, but we’re going to try to continue to work through these issues,” Mnuchin said at a conference sponsored by the Milken Institute.

U.S. stocks had rallied in recent sessions on optimism that the government would provide a fresh stimulus to reduce damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic.  “Optimism took hold like a rocket last week and now it’s coming back down to earth a little bit,” said Mike Zigmont, head of trading and research at Harvest Volatility Management in New York. “I think a stimulus as a large macro event is already baked into stock prices. It’s just a question of when the details emerge and when the stimulus goes into effect.”

Amazon AMZN.O dropped 2.3% and Microsoft MSFT.O lost 0.9%, both weighing more than any other stocks on the S&P 500. 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 0.58% to end at 28,514 points, while the S&P 500 .SPX lost 0.66% to 3,488.67.  The Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 0.8% to 11,768.73. 

Bank of America BAC.N fell 5.3% and Wells Fargo WFC.N tumbled 6% after a disappointing quarterly results.  That left the S&P 500 banks index .SPXBK 2.4% lower.  Third-quarter earnings season is getting underway, with signs of overall improvement in expectations of how badly U.S. companies have been hurt by the pandemic. Analysts expect earnings to fall 19% from a year earlier, according to Refinitiv IBES data, versus a 25% drop forecast on July 1.

Markets have also begun to digest the prospect of a Democratic victory, strategists and fund managers said.  While many investors view Democratic candidate Joe Biden as more likely to raise taxes, they are increasingly pointing to potential benefits of a Biden presidency, such as greater infrastructure spending and less global trade uncertainty.

UnitedHealth Group Inc UNH.N dropped 2.9%, despite raising its profit forecast, as the U.S. insurer said it was difficult to predict the fallout of the pandemic on earnings.

Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.51-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.95-to-1 ratio favored decliners.  The S&P 500 posted 23 new 52-week highs and no new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 109 new highs and 14 new lows.

Volume on U.S. exchanges was 8.2 billion shares, compared with the 9.6 billion average over the last 20 trading days.