Shares of defense contractors rose Thursday.
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Shares of defense contractors and exchange-traded funds ended the day on a high note Thursday as investors braced for possible artillery and military spending after Russiaâs attacks on Ukraine. Tough talk from President Joe Biden and more sanctions against Russia heartened investors.
The
iShares US Aerospace & Defense ETF
(ticker: ITA) rose 2.8%, to $104.49, and the SPDR
S&P Aerospace & Defense ETF
( XAR) rose 4.6%, to $114.42.
Palo Alto Networks (PANW) shares soared 13%. Zscaler (ZS), CrowdStrike (CRWD),Â
Tenable Holdings
(
TENB
), Varonis Systems (VRNS),
Fortinet
(
FTNT
), Telos (TLS),Â
Mandiant
(
MNDT
), andÂ
CyberArk Software
(
CYBR
) also ended with gains.
One of the biggest individual gainers within those ETFs included
Northrop Grumman
(NOC), Â a maker of aircraft systems, whose shares rose 2.4%, to $395.49. Shares of
Lockheed Martin
(LMT) gained 1.8%, to $395.71. Other gainers included
General Dynamics
(GD), which rose 1.0%, to $218.53, and
Textron
(TXT), which gained 1.4%, to $69.50. Shares of
Raytheon Technologies
(RTX), which rose 2.8%, to $94.25.
Cybersecurity stocks ended higher too.
First Trust NASDAQ Cybersecurity ETF
(CIBR) rose 7.0%, to $48.09, while
ETFMG Prime Cyber Security ETF
(HACK) rose 6.0%, to $54.96.
Boeing
(BA), which attributed about a third of fourth-quarter revenue to its commercial airplanes business, saw shares rise 1.0%.
Amid the mix, broader markets were lifted by tech stocks. The
Dow Jones Industrial Average
was down more than 2% at its worst level, before finishing the day at 33,223.83, up 92.07, or 0.3%. The
S&P 500 index also recovered from early losses to end at 4,288.70, up 63.20, or 1.5%, while the
Nasdaq Composite
index soared 436.10, or 3.3%, to close at 13,473.59. Technology stocks soared and were responsible for much of the turnaround.
Write to Logan Moore at logan.moore@barrons.com
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