Feb. 1 (UPI) — U.S. markets rebounded Monday following their worst week since October as investors seemed to set aside concerns about speculative trading.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 229.29 points, or 0.76%, to climb back above 30,000 points after last week’s losses. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 gained 1.61% and the Nasdaq Composite ended the day up 2.55%.
Tech stocks helped to lift the market higher as Amazon stock gained 4.26%, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, climbed 3.6%, Microsoft increased 3.32% and Apple closed up 1.65%.
GameStop stock, which had increased by 400% last week after being targeted by members of the r/WallStreetBets subreddit, dropped by 30.77% on Monday.
Members of the group bought large amounts of the GameStop shares as well as other heavily-shorted stocks such as AMC, leaving some hedge funds who bet against the stocks bankrupt and prompting firms to pause trading of those stocks.
The group turned its focus to silver on Monday sending premarket spot prices up more than 10% to about $30 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Despite the concern around volatility brought on by the trading activity last week, Mark Haefele, chief investment officer at UBS Global Wealth, said the market did not have concerns about growth.
“Many institutions have been adjusting their books to account for the risks to short positions arising from recent coordinated buying by retail investors. But given the speed and magnitude of flows in recent days, we think most of the pressure is now behind us,” Haefele said.
