Wall Street choppy as Eli Lilly jumps, UnitedHealth plummets

Wall Street choppy as Eli Lilly jumps, UnitedHealth plummets

By Noel Randewich and Lisa Pauline Mattackal

Thu April 17, 2025 4:33 PM

Considering how news and sentiment changes hour by hour and given the holiday weekend, there was a general “playing it safe” sell off today due to hesitancy to stay in the market over the long holiday weekend. The S&P and Nasdaq swayed back and forth between red and black, the S&P even having a healthy gain of about 50 points by 3 p.m., even though the Dow remained solidly in the red all day. In a way that’s good though since the Dow does better when things are risky so this might mean investors are becoming less risk-averse overall.  

But the reality check is that all three indexes suffered serious losses for the week ranging from 1.5 to 2.7% and the S&P is down 7% for the month so far. Today’s expert summed it up, “The market wants Trump to announce trade deals. The market wants tangible results and that’s something the market is not getting.” The day’s good news is that there were fewer new applications for unemployment which indicates a stable labor market, though due to the uncertainty, employers are delaying hiring. For the shortened week, volume was considerably below the 19.2 billion average, coming in today at a mere 14.6 billion. 

DJ: 39,669.39  -699.57       NAS: 16,307.16  -516.01       S&P: 5,275.70  -120.93         4/16

DJ: 39,142.23  -527.16       NAS: 16,286.45  -20.71         S&P: 5,282.70  +7.00            4/17

Thu 4-17-25 4:33 pm Wall Street choppy as Eli Lilly jumps, UnitedHealth plummets | Reuters