October is coming to a close on Tuesday, and while kids are getting ready to put on their costumes to go trick-or-treating, investors are reflecting on what was an active month for the stock market.
October brought a variety of market-moving news, including the war in the Middle East, a slew of company earnings, and a surge in yields on Treasury debt. All that has come as investors continue to focus on what the Federal Reserve might do next as it tries to battle high inflation by raising interest rates.
Some stocks rode out the month as winners, while others have had a scary couple of weeks. These are the best and worst performers in the
Dow Jones Industrial Average,
Nasdaq 100,
and
S&P 500
in October.
Dow Jones Industrial Average
The best-performing stock in the Dow was
Verizon Communications
(ticker: VZ), which gained 8.4%. The company’s third-quarter results helped to propel shares.
Nike
(NKE) came in second, with a 7.5% rise.
Microsoft
(MSFT) rounded out third with a 7.1% jump. The company got a boost after reporting strong financial results on Oct. 24. Among the highlights was that the Azure cloud business grew more than management had predicted.
Caterpillar
(CAT) was the biggest loser in the Dow, due in large part to a drop today after earnings. It finished October down 17%.
Chevron
(CVX) was the second-biggest loser in the index with a loss of 13%, mainly because it reported weaker-than-expected third-quarter earnings last week. Also weighing on the stock was news earlier in the month that
Chevron
had reached a deal to purchase independent oil and gas company
Hess
(HES) in an all-stock transaction.
Nasdaq 100
Netflix
(NFLX) was the top performer in the Nasdaq 100 with a 9% gain, for its best month since June. The streaming company turned in solid third-quarter financial results and subscriber numbers, partly because of an earlier move to limit the amount of people that use a single account to one household.
An announcement that the company would impose higher prices helped as well.
Investors in
Align Technology
stock had much less to smile about. Earnings and revenue for the third quarter were disappointing, while management cut its financial forecasts for fiscal 2023 in response to weakening demand.
Shares fell 40% in October, leaving the maker of clear teeth aligners the worst-performing stock in the index for the month. It has been the stock’s worst month since October 2018.
S&P 500
Allstate
(ALL) was the best performer in the S&P 500 for October. The stock gained 15% in October, its best month since November 2020.
The worst performer in the S&P 500, meanwhile, was
SolarEdge Technologies
(SEDG), a stock caught in a downdraft that has also hit its rivals. The
Invesco Solar ETF
has dropped 43% in 2023, its worst year since 2016, as rising interest rates and regulatory changes in California have discouraged households from installing solar panels.
SolarEdge released preliminary financial data for the third quarter on Oct. 19, saying that results would be lower than expected. “During the second part of the third quarter of 2023, we experienced substantial unexpected cancellations and pushouts of existing backlog from our European distributors,” Chief Executive Zvi Lando said in a news release.
The shares have tumbled 73% this year, including a loss of 41% in October that marks the stock’s worst month on record.
Write to Angela Palumbo at [email protected]
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