Second-quarter GDP hits Trump's 3% target

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August 30, 2017

The Nasdaq and the S&P 500 climbed on Wednesday, while the Dow ended little changed.

Within the tech-heavy Nasdaq, Netflix was up by 3.5%, Amazon gained 1.5%, and Tesla was climbed 1.4%.

First up, the scoreboard:

Dow: 21,892.43, +27.06, (+0.12%)
S&P 500: 2,457.59, +11.29, (+0.46%)
Nasdaq: 6,368.31, +66.42,(+1.05%)

1. Second-quarter GDP hits Trump's 3% target. US economic growth in the second quarter is now thought to be stronger than previously reported, helped by stronger business investments and consumer spending.

2. ADP showed big job gains in August. US businesses added a healthy 237,000 jobs in August with broad gains across several industries including construction, manufacturing and leisure and hospitality, according to a private survey.

3. The dollar bounced back a day after tumbling to its lowest level since January 2015. The US dollar index was up by 0.7% at 92.91 in the mid-afternoon. "The greenback has started to stabilize a bit after holding some key technical levels yesterday," said Mark McCormick, the North American Head of FX Strategy at TD Securities, in emailed comments.

4. The largest oil refinery in the US is shutting down because of flooding from Harvey. Motiva's refinery in Port Arthur, with a capacity of 603,000 barrels a day, began shutting down at around 5 a.m. CT on Wednesday "in response to increasing local flood conditions," according to The Wall Street Journal. Motiva is owned by Saudi Arabia's state oil behemoth Saudi Aramco.

5. Russia's central bank mounts one of its biggest ever bailouts of a financial institution. The bank is taking up to 75% of Otkritie, the country's biggest private lender.

6. Traders are no longer impressed by the biggest driver of stock market gains. The stock market is becoming a victim of its own success. Even when companies turn in impressive earnings reports, that strength isn't translating to higher stock prices. "Investors appear to be taking the recent earnings success of stocks for granted," Brian Hayes, the head of equity quantitative research at Morgan Stanley, wrote in a client note.

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