S&P 500 Retakes Trade Above 50-day Moving Average, After Wednesday's Plunge | Fox Business

The S&P 500 index traded above its short-term trading average on Friday, two days after the broad-market benchmark suffered steep losses on the back of turmoil in the White House. The S&P 500 was recently trading up 0.6% at 2,378, which is above its 50-day moving average of 2,369.36, according to FactSet data. The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average on Wednesday tumbled below their short-term trading averages, as volatility spiked amid investors' worries about President Donald Trump's ability to enact Wall Street-friendly policies. Market technicians use moving averages to help determine an asset's short-term and long-term trends, with a break above the 50-day line signaling a bullish uptrend. Trump has been assailed by a number of stories that allege that members of his presidential campaign have ties to Russia and that he attempted to interfere with a federal probe, all of which the president has denied. On Wednesday, the S&P 500, the Dow and the Nasdaq Composite Index rang up their worst losses in months, while the market's fear gauge, the CBOE Volatility Index saw its biggest one-day pop in nearly a year. Moves in VIX tend to have an inverse relationship with stocks and signal that worries about the market swinging lower are picking up. The three main benchmarks are still set to record weekly declines of at least 1%, but trading action over the past two sessions may signal that investors are taking a respite from Wednesday's political turbulence. The Dow is still trading below its 50-day moving average of 20,773.63, most recently up 0.4% at 20,741.