Markets: News  

The stock market is off to a weak start on this quadruple witching options expiration day. Regional banks are under pressure, again, after First Republic Bank (FRC 25.13, -9.15, -26.7%) provided a cash position update and suspended its dividend.Also, reports indicated that banks borrowed $11.9 billion from the Bank Term Funding Program and a record $153 billion from the Fed's discount window for the week ending March 15, exceeding anything during the financial crisis.That understanding has renewed investors' worries about the health of the banking sector. Many of the names that have been hit hardest recently are trading down today with no specific news catalyst to account for the moves. PacWest Bancorp (PACW 9.59, -1.85, -16.2%) and Western Alliance Bancorp (WAL 30.14, -6.79, -18.4%) are standouts in that regard, along with Credit Suisse (CS ) despite its engagement with the Swiss National Bank to shore up its liquidity position.Shortly after the open, the market was attempting to move somewhat higher, driven by gains in the mega cap space. The market declined, though, as some key supportive names like Apple (AAPL 155.31, -0.54, -0.3%) and Amazon.com (AMZN 98.62, -1.41, -1.4%) fell from their highs and slipped into negative territory. Fortunately, other mega cap names like Alphabet (GOOG 102.17, +1.0, +1.1%), Microsoft (MSFT 278.87, +2.66, +1.0%), and NVIDIA (NVDA 257.56, +2.12, +0.8%), which was upgraded to Overweight from Equal Weight at Morgan Stanley, have continued to trade higher, providing some offsetting support for the broader market. The Vanguard Mega Cap Growth ETF (MGK) sports a relatively narrow decline of 0.6% compared to the 1.7% decline in the Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF (RSP). The main indices have settled into narrow trading ranges, near their lows of the day, after the S&P 500 found some support at the 3,900 level. Small and mid cap stocks are lagging their larger peers like they have throughout the week. The Russell 2000 is down 2.1% and the S&P Mid Cap 400 is down 2.0%. Treasury yields have declined in a safety trade. The 2-yr note yield is down 17 basis points to 3.96% and the 10-yr note yield is down 16 basis points to 3.41%. All 11 S&P 500 sectors trade down with information technology (-0.1%) sitting atop the leaderboard while financials (-2.9%) brings up the rear. Reviewing today's economic data:Total industrial production was unchanged month-over-month in February (Briefing.com consensus +0.5%) following an upwardly revised revised 0.3% increase (from 0.0%) in January. The capacity utilization rate held steady at 78.0% (Briefing.com consensus 78.5%) following a downward revision to 78.0% (from 78.3%) for January.The key takeaway from the report is that industrial production activity is softening, evidenced both by the year-over-year decline in total production and a capacity utilization rate that is near its lowest level since September 2021.Leading Indicators fell 0.3% in February (Briefing.com consensus -0.4%) following a 0.3% decline in January.The preliminary University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index for March dropped to 63.4 (Briefing.com consensus 67.2) from 67.0 in February. In the same period a year ago, the index stood at 59.4. Note: Roughly 85% of responses had been recorded prior to the failure of Silicon Valley Bank.The key takeaway from the report is the moderation in inflation expectations, which will please the Fed somewhat, although year-ahead inflation expectations still remain well above the 2.3-3.0% range seen in the two years prior to the pandemic.