Stock Market Today: Amazon Lifts Nasdaq to Another Record Close

Stocks returned from the holiday weekend somewhat sluggishly. Slight declines on Tuesday snapped win streaks for a couple major indexes, though the Nasdaq managed to claw out another new high.

What weighed on investors' optimism?

The Institute for Supply Management's services reading fell 3.9 points to 60.1 in June; anything over 50 signals expansion, so services are still improving, just at a slower rate than in May.

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"June's headline was a fair bit softer than anticipated (Barclays 64.0; consensus 63.4)," says Barclays economist Jonathan Millar. "Today's report suggests that supply bottlenecks remain acute amid very strong demand, slowing the transition of activity from goods to services."

Meanwhile, over the weekend, OPEC and its allies failed to agree on production increases, postponing talks indefinitely. While that initially drove U.S. crude oil prices to six-year highs, they finished soundly negative, declining 2.4% to $73.37 per barrel.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (-0.6% to 34,577) ended a four-day win streak, while the S&P 500 (-0.2% to 4,343) failed to secure its eighth consecutive advance.

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But the Nasdaq (+0.2% to 14,633) managed to score a record close, helped by Amazon.com (AMZN, +4.7%), which leaped to a fresh all-time high following Monday's passing of the torch from founder Jeff Bezos to new CEO Andy Jassy. Tugging in the other direction was Tesla (TSLA, -2.9%); the electric vehicle maker struggled after CEO Elon Musk's weekend comments that he didn't expect that developing self-driving technologies would be "so hard."

Other action in the stock market today:

• The small-cap Russell 2000 took a deep 1.4% cut to 2,274.
• DiDi Global (DIDI) was a notable decliner on Wall Street on Tuesday, just days after the Chinese ride-sharing firm went public. DIDI stock shed 18.9% after China said new users were banned from downloading the company's app until regulators concluded a cybersecurity review. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that officials in China suggested DIDI delay its initial public offering (IPO) in the U.S. until after the review. Regardless, the company opened for trading on the New York Stock Exchange last Wednesday.
• AMC Entertainment (AMC) fell 3.9% after the company withdrew plans to issue up to 25 million more shares, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. In a tweet, the movie chain's CEO Adam Aron said, "It's no secret I think shareholders should authorize 25 million more AMC shares. But what YOU think is important to us. Many yes, many no. AMC does not want to proceed with such a split." The meme stock is still up roughly 2,260% for the year to date.
• Gold futures gained 0.6% to end at $1,794.20 an ounce.
• The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) jumped 8.0% to 16.28.
• Bitcoin prices ebbed and flowed across the weekend, but finished Tuesday afternoon at $33,948.73, up 2.2% from the same time on Friday. (Bitcoin trades 24 hours a day; prices reported here are as of 4 p.m. each trading day.

Grow, Growth! Grow!

Growth is evening the score in 2021. While value still maintains a performance edge across the year, the growth style has flipped the script over the past couple months – and the fun might just be starting.

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These growth-at-a-reasonable price (GARP) stocks are a perfect example of that, offering up substantial future earnings prospects while trading at true-blue values.

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