Dow Jones Industrial Average struggles to lock in gains on faltering Tuesday
- The Dow Jones took a wobbly step higher on Tuesday as market flows draw into the middle.
- Equities remain under pressure, despite a boost from fresh AI tech announcements.
- Crypto markets recovered some lost ground, but still remain deeply underwater.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) faced a messy session on Tuesday, exploring early upside and challenging the 47,600 level before getting knocked back down once again. New-old players in the AI space are cropping up to challenge the long-running Nvidia (NVDA) hegemony in the hardware space, prompting a back-and-forth in major tech names heading into the midweek.
The Dow Jones and the Standard & Poor’s 500 (SP500) indexes are grappling to hold onto intraday gains, with the Dow climbing around 120 points or 0.25%, and the SP500 rising a scant 11 points, or 0.15%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 climbed 130 points, or 0.54%, to cross 23,400 as the AI and crypto segments recover their footing.
Crypto rebound looks to grow some legs
Bitcoin (BTC) rebounded around 6.5%, clawing back recent losses as crypto traders pile back into what many speculators hope is the bottom of the crypto plunge that dragged BTC/USD prices down over 36% from all-time highs set in October.
AI hardware race continues to heat up, maybe?
The AI hardware race continues to heat up, and long-time AI champion Nvidia declined from Tuesday’s meager highs after Amazon (AMZN) announced a rushed launch of its own AI-focused chipsets, tailor-made to compete with Nvidia’s AI-servicing GPUs. Amazon rose 1.2% on the headlines before it too fell back toward the previous day’s close, slipping back below $236 per share in the process.
According to Amazon, their new 'Trainium3' chipsets will be able to handle demanding calculation loads necessary to train and run AI models. However, a key sticking point that is preventing Amazon stock from running hot: According to the company, its AI-focused chipsets lack extensive function libraries that are bespoke to Nvidia hardware, meaning any cost savings in operating will likely be expended in setup and additional training time, making a transition from pre-existing Nvidia hardware a lateral move.
Political jitters continue to roil just beneath the surface
Never ones to sit idly by and let an equity recovery run unimpeded, the Trump administration is hard at work pumping out eyebrow-raising statements that are raising political jitters among market participants. US President Donald Trump reiterated his frequent promises that the federal government would be handing out supplementary payments to Americans from tariff income. By all accounts, tariff inflows have drastically underperformed expectations from the Trump administration itself, and are overwhelmingly being paid for by US companies and citizens to begin with.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is working double-duty to walk back Trump’s own “tariff repayment” proposals, highlighting the dysfunction underscoring the Trump administration. According to Bessent, “tariff repayments” are likely to take the form of steep tax rebates, which the Treasury Secretary could be coming as soon as Q1 2026.
Dow Jones daily chart
Dow Jones FAQs
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, one of the oldest stock market indices in the world, is compiled of the 30 most traded stocks in the US. The index is price-weighted rather than weighted by capitalization. It is calculated by summing the prices of the constituent stocks and dividing them by a factor, currently 0.152. The index was founded by Charles Dow, who also founded the Wall Street Journal. In later years it has been criticized for not being broadly representative enough because it only tracks 30 conglomerates, unlike broader indices such as the S&P 500.
Many different factors drive the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). The aggregate performance of the component companies revealed in quarterly company earnings reports is the main one. US and global macroeconomic data also contributes as it impacts on investor sentiment. The level of interest rates, set by the Federal Reserve (Fed), also influences the DJIA as it affects the cost of credit, on which many corporations are heavily reliant. Therefore, inflation can be a major driver as well as other metrics which impact the Fed decisions.
Dow Theory is a method for identifying the primary trend of the stock market developed by Charles Dow. A key step is to compare the direction of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) and the Dow Jones Transportation Average (DJTA) and only follow trends where both are moving in the same direction. Volume is a confirmatory criteria. The theory uses elements of peak and trough analysis. Dow’s theory posits three trend phases: accumulation, when smart money starts buying or selling; public participation, when the wider public joins in; and distribution, when the smart money exits.
There are a number of ways to trade the DJIA. One is to use ETFs which allow investors to trade the DJIA as a single security, rather than having to buy shares in all 30 constituent companies. A leading example is the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (DIA). DJIA futures contracts enable traders to speculate on the future value of the index and Options provide the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell the index at a predetermined price in the future. Mutual funds enable investors to buy a share of a diversified portfolio of DJIA stocks thus providing exposure to the overall index.
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