Trading results for 22 January 2025
Trump has started handing out money – or rather, making promises to do so – and this has pushed markets upward. The president announced a $500 billion programme to develop and support artificial intelligence-related infrastructure, prompting analysts and investors to start dividing up the spoils of the yet-to-materialise funds. The biggest beneficiary (at least theoretically for now) was Oracle (ORCL, +6.75%), which plans to partner with Softbank and OpenAI to establish Stargate, a cutting-edge AI-focused company. Investors embraced this project enthusiastically, boosting Oracle’s market capitalisation by nearly 7% in a single day.
Oracle wasn’t the only winner. Other leading IT companies, especially those at the forefront of AI development and implementation, also reaped the rewards. The tech sector as a whole surged, standing head and shoulders above other market segments with an average gain of 2.22%.
Unsurprisingly, this optimism spread across the market. Indexes soared from the start of the main trading session, staying at daily highs until the closing bell. Most of the action revolved around attempts to break historical records. Ultimately, only the broad-market S&P 500 managed to set a new all-time high during trading, surpassing the psychological milestone of 6,100 points by 0.84 points. However, it couldn’t hold this level and closed slightly lower at 6,086.36 points.
Among the indexes, the best performer was, predictably, the tech-heavy NASDAQ Composite, which gained over 1% (+1.28%). Despite this strong showing, the NASDAQ remained far from its historical highs, merely reclaiming a position above the 20,000-point mark.
Indexes from the ITS family also closed the day in positive territory, though with more modest gains. The global market ITS World index (ITSW) rose by just 0.05%, while the ITS Shariah index (ITSS) performed better, climbing 0.3%.
Yesterday’s trading starkly highlighted the distribution of gains and losses among individual stocks, clearly reflected in the ITS World index. Of the 50 stocks in the index, 25 ended the day up and 25 closed in the red. The standout performers were a stellar trio of tech giants: Oracle (ORCL, +6.75%), Nvidia (NVDA, +4.41%), and Microsoft (MSFT, +4.13%). Conversely, the worst performers were from the automotive sector: Chinese firm Li Auto (LI, -4.92%), American Tesla (TSLA, -2.11%), and European Ferrari (RACE, -1.76%).
This created a sharply polarised trading day, characterised by clear winners and losers – a dynamic that is likely to become a frequent feature under President Trump’s administration. Investors may need to adjust to this new normal of stark contrasts and binary outcomes.