The Economic Times·2026-01-08 01:55Market Overview - The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average experienced declines after reaching intraday record highs earlier in the session [1] - The S&P 500 declined 0.34% to end at 6,920.93 points, while the Nasdaq gained 0.16% to 23,584.28 points, and the Dow Jones fell 0.94% to 48,996.08 points [6][7] Company Performance - Shares of housing acquisition companies fell sharply after President Trump announced plans to ban Wall Street investors from purchasing single-family homes, aiming to reduce home prices. Blackstone and Apollo Global Management dropped over 5%, contributing to a 1.4% decline in the S&P 500 financials index. American Homes 4 Rent fell 4.3%, while Zillow rose over 2% [1] - JPMorgan Chase fell 2.3% after Wolfe Research downgraded the bank from "outperform" to "peer perform" [2] - Northrop Grumman slid 5.5% and Lockheed Martin lost 4.8% following Trump's statement that dividends and stock buybacks would not be permitted for defense companies until production issues were resolved [4] - Nvidia and Microsoft rose about 1% each, and Alphabet increased more than 2% as investors returned to AI-related stocks [5][9] - Memory and storage technology companies saw declines, with Western Digital dropping almost 9% and Seagate Technology falling 6.7%. First Solar tumbled 10% after Jefferies downgraded its rating to "hold" from "buy" [7][9] Market Dynamics - The S&P 500 is currently trading at approximately 22 times expected earnings, down from 23 in November but above the five-year average of 19 [6][9] - The volume on U.S. exchanges was relatively high, with 17.4 billion shares traded, compared to an average of 16.2 billion shares over the previous 20 sessions [8]