Stock market news for June 24, 2024

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 260.88 points, or 0.67%, during Monday’s trading session.

Meanwhile, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite fell 0.31% and 1.09%, respectively.

— Hakyung Kim

Gold prices could hit $3,000 per ounce over the next 12 to 18 months if demand increases among large institutional investors, according to Bank of America commodity strategists.

“We believe gold can hit $3,000/oz over the next 12-18 months, although flows do not justify that price level right now,” the strategists wrote. “Achieving this would require non-commercial demand to pick up from current levels, which in turn needs a Fed rate cut to happen.”

— Spencer Kimball

The Dow broke away from the other major indexes on Monday, boosted by Goldman Sachs and other rallying names.

The blue-chip average added more than 250 points in afternoon trading, a gain that equates to over 0.7%. The S&P 500 traded near its flatline, while the Nasdaq Composite slipped 0.7%.

Goldman Sachs added around 8 of those points. Amgen and United Health each contributed more than 5 points.

In all, more than two out of every three Dow members tracked for gains. Home Depot and Salesforce were among the small group of laggards, with each slipping by more than 3 points.

— Alex Harring

San Francisco Federal Reserve President Mary Daly on Monday said the central bank has made progress in its efforts to bring inflation down but can’t let up yet.

“We’ve made a lot of progress, but there is still work to do,” Daly said in remarks for a speech in her home district. “Monetary policy is working, but we need to finish the job.”

There are multiple scenarios left to play out, with each in “the realm of reasonable,” she added. They include a slow decline in inflation that would require a higher-for-longer approach on interest rates; a faster decline that would necessitate cuts, or a “gradual decrease and a rebalancing in the labor market, which would mean “we can normalize policy over time, as many expect.”

“We need to be ready to respond to however the economy evolves,” Daly said.

—Jeff Cox

Affirm’s best-in-class fundamentals are poised to give it a competitive edge over its peers, according to Goldman Sachs.

The bank assumed coverage of the stock at a buy rating and a $42 price target, which implies that shares could rally 40% from here.

As one catalyst, analyst Will Nance pointed to Affirm’s differentiated approach to underwriting. Additional strengths include the company’s track record of managing its revenue less transaction costs margins.

CNBC Pro subscribers can read the full story here.

— Lisa Kailai Han

Crude oil futures rose 1% Monday and are on pace to post a gain for the month, as signs point to strengthening gasoline demand in the US and geopolitical tensions flare again in the Middle East.

“The chief underlying reason behind the price strength, nonetheless, is the growing confidence that global oil inventories will inevitably plunge during the summer in the northern hemisphere,” Tamas Varga, an analyst with oil broker PVM, said in a note Monday.

Ryan McKay, senior commodity strategist at TD Securities, said supply risks are now back in focus as tensions are building on the Israel-Lebanon border. Israel and the Iran-backed militia group Hezbollah have traded threats of war in recent weeks.

— Spencer Kimball

Further signs of weakness in large tech stocks could spur a rash of selling by some large trading firms, according to Bank of America.

Analyst Chintan Kotecha said in a note to clients that commodity trading advisors — big players in the futures contract market — are unbalanced on Nasdaq 100 positions and could be quick to sell if there is a pullback.

“According to our models, CTAs are likely now back to very stretched levels of long positioning in NASDAQ-100 futures. With positioning at these levels, stop loss triggers become tighter and with the last two days’ declines our models estimate pressure for CTA unwinds starting at levels 2.8% lower from Friday’s close,” the note said.

The CTA positioning, combined with the rising popularity of leveraged and inverse ETFs, could lead to “more dramatic 1-day drop,” Kotecha wrote.

— Jesse Pound

Here are some of the names moving during midday trading:

• RXO — The stock soared nearly 23% after the freight company said it came to an agreement to purchase Coyote Logistics from UPS for more than $1 billion. UPS was up 1.5%.
• ResMed, Inspire Medical Systems — ResMed and Inspire Medical Systems, which manufacture devices to treat obstructive sleep apnea, tumbled 11% and 15%, respectively, following the news Friday news that Eli Lilly‘s weight loss drug tirzepatide reduced the severity of the condition. Eli Lilly’s stock gained 2%.
• Alnylam Pharmaceuticals — Shares surged 35% after a late-stage study found that the therapeutics company’s drug vutrisiran showed a statistically significant reduction in the number of deaths and cardiovascular events in patients with ATTR amyloidosis with cardiomyopathy.

To see more stocks making midday moves, read the full story here.

—Michelle Fox

Stocks tied to the price of bitcoin fell on Monday as the cryptocurrency took another leg down to $60,000, the bottom of the tight range it’s been stuck in since March.

Coinbase lost 5% and MicroStrategy dropped nearly 7%. The biggest mining stocks, Marathon Digital and Riot Platforms, retreated just 1% each. Other miners registered steeper losses.

The price of the flagship cryptocurrency was last down 5% at $60,724.45, according to Coin Metrics. It’s on pace to end the month lower by 10%.

— Tanaya Macheel

Deutsche Bank thinks equities could be headed for a slight breather as a multitude of negative catalysts coalesce.

“Fast forwarding, we see conditions in place for another breather, this time with concerns spanning all three elements of our demand-supply framework,” strategist Parag Thatte wrote in a June 21 note.

The strategists framework encompasses “a sharp but narrow jump in positioning to near the top of its historical band, driven by tech; rising risk appetite which has prompted a boom in equity inflows but now looks stretched; a temporary diminishing of buybacks again as blackout periods ramp up next week ahead of the Q2 earnings season.”

— Brian Evans

During Monday’s trading session, 31 stocks in the S&P 500 index hit new 52-week highs.

Names that reached this milestone included:

• Alphabet A share trading all-time highs back to its IPO on Aug 19, 2004
• The TJX Companies trading at all-time highs back to IPO in 1987
• Colgate-Palmolive trading at all-time high levels back to its first listing on the NYSE in 1930, the company was founded in 1806
• Procter & Gamble trading at all-time high levels back to when it was first listed on the NYSE in 1891
• Walmart Stores trading at all-time high levels back to when it first began trading on the NYSE in Aug, 1972
• Ameriprise Financial trading at all-time highs back to its IPO in Oct, 2005
• L3Harris Technologies trading at levels not seen since Dec, 2022
• Microsoft trading at all-time high levels back to its IPO in March, 1986
• Motorola Solutions trading at all-time highs back to its when it began trading as a separate entity post the Motorola Mobility split
• Bank of America trading at levels not seen since Apr, 2022

On the other hand, Solventum was trading at its all-time lows since its spinoff from 3M in March 2024.

— Lisa Kailai Han, Christopher Hayes

Nvidia shares dropped nearly 6% Monday, building on a nearly 4% decline from last week that snapped eight straight weeks of wins.

With Monday’s intraday losses, the chipmaker sits about 10% below its closing high and more than 15% off of its intraday high from earlier this month.

The stock is on pace for its worst day since April.

Shares of freight company RXO were on track for their best day ever after purchasing the Coyote Logistics unit from UPS.

RXO jumped more than 19% in morning trading, putting it on pace for its biggest one-day gain since it spun off to become its own public company in late 2022. The Charlotte-based company paid more than $1 billion to UPS, whose shares traded up by around 2%.

Despite Monday’s rally, shares of RXO have gained just about 4% in 2024.

BTIG technical strategist Jonathan Krinsky said in a note to clients Sunday that Nvidia traded at roughly 100% above its 200-day moving average last week, the biggest gap for any market-leading company since 1990.

The stock that came closest to hitting this metric was Cisco Systems near the peak of the dot-com bubble, according to BTIG.

Cocoa is down almost 11% to a low of $7,901 per tonne. This marked the commodity’s lowest level since May 27, when it traded as low as $7,869. Prices came under pressure on concerns that second quarter global cocoa demand reports scheduled for release next month will indicate record-high prices leading to demand destruction.

Year to date, cocoa is still up 88.4%, on pace for its best year back through 1980.

— Hakyung Kim, Gina Francolla

The S&P 500 little changed to start Monday’s trading session.

The broad market index declined less than 0.1%.

Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.2%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 0.2%.

— Hakyung Kim

Chicago Federal Reserve President Austan Goolsbee said Monday that more soft readings on inflation would raise questions about whether interest rates are too high.

“If we get more months, like what we have just seen in the last month on inflation, coupled with slowing conditions in some of the other parts of the real economy, then you would have to start questioning should we remain as restrictive as we’ve been,” Goolsbee said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Though he would not commit to when he thinks rate cuts would be appropriate, Goolsbee notehe is “hopeful” that the inflation rate is heading back to the Fed’s 2% goal.

Goolsbee does not vote this year on the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee.

—Jeff Cox

The lack of market volatility on Wall Street is tied to seasonality, the 2024 election overhang as well as a robust amount of cash sitting on the sidelines, according to Bank of America chief equity technical strategist Stephen Suttmeier.

“I think the market is continuing to run-up because not enough people are on board with it,” told CNBC’s Suttmeier told CNBC’s “Squawkbox” on Monday. “We’ve been staying overbought…and people hate chasing overbought markets, and I think that’s the reason overbought markets continue to grind higher.”

Suttmeier noted that the S&P 500 could hit the 5,600 level in a potential rally, and also said the benchmark index could climb as much as 20% in 2024.

— Brian Evans