By Yasin Ebrahim

Investing.com – The S&P 500 struggled for direction Wednesday, as investors paused their bullish bets on stocks a day after the broader market’s biggest daily gain since March.

While the Nasdaq gained 0.5% (or 0.15%), the Nasdaq fell 0.1% or 26 points. .  

Even though the stock market is still sluggish, investors continue to feel positive about stocks despite the negative news that highlights the effectiveness of vaccines against Omicron viruses.

Pfizer BioNTech reported Wednesday that their preliminary results had shown that the Covid-19 vaccine kills the Omicron strain of the virus. Pfizer (NYSE 🙂 and BioNTech, (NASDAQ 🙂 were lower in trading.

CNBC reported that Pfizer stated it will submit the complete results of Covid-19, Paxlovid’s, Covida pill to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over the coming days. CNBC quoted Albert Bourla as the chief executive officer.

A defensive market corner, Consumer Stables was the largest loser. This was accompanied by declines in Brown Forman (NYSE:), Kroger (NYSE;), and Kraft Heinz.

Kraft Heinz (NASDAQ 🙂 plunged more than 4% following Guggenheim’s downgrade of the stock from neutral to buy. The reason? Marginal pressures.

Guggenheim explained that “Kraft Heinz portfolio lacks pricing power is becoming more obvious as the weeks go by, which we believe has a significant consequence for near term top- and bottomline growth.”

Brown Forman (NYSE 🙂 announced third quarter results which fell below expectations in both top and bottom line, sending shares up to 2%

A renewed optimism about the recovery has pushed cyclical stocks, including energy and financials higher.

Banks and financials lost some of their gains from the previous day despite increasing Treasury yields. This is a ally for bank stocks.

State Street Zions Bancorporation, (NASDAQ:) Wells Fargo (NYSE:) Financials led to the downturn.

As investors continue to value in an increase in Federal Reserve’s pace of tightening monetary policy, the price rose to 1.5%.

However, the market was supported by strong communication services as more social media stocks, including Twitter (NYSE) and Meta Platforms, (NASDAQ) grew.

Twitter’s newly appointed chief executive spoke out about improving execution speed to aid plans to double the revenue in 2023.

Apple (NASDAQ:) reached a record-breaking high, bringing the total market capital for these companies to an unimaginable $3 trillion.

Roku (NASDAQ:), meanwhile, notched an agreement with Google to keep YouTube and YouTube TV on its platform, sending its shares more than 16% higher.

Stitch Fix (NASDAQ): The stock fell by more than 23% due to the reduction in revenues of the fashion and styling company.

Energy prices struggled to match the rally that occurred a day before, due to data showing lower than expected weekly crude oil stockpile growth.

Last week’s inventories dropped to 240,000 barrels, despite forecasts of a draw at 1.71 million barrels.