Daily Wrap
DJIA -8.68 (-0.06%) to 15,291.66;S&P 500 +0.30 (+0.02%) to 1,652.62;NASDAQ +16.50 (+0.47%) to 3,520.76
If you closed down your computer and went away after the close, you missed an after market that was more exciting than the entire trading day! I have the benefit of writing this after the close where we see the S&P 500 futures up nicely after the close likely tied to a Q&A session held by Ben Bernanke Chairman of the Federal Reserve (if you didn’t know). I will need more time to read through but I also didn’t think there was too much new information. Likely the comments regarding continued weakness in the jobs market and lack of inflation, or at least below Fed targets, lead market participants to believe and scaling back in QE is likely not coming soon and helped ripped the S&P 500 higher in after hours trading.
Tomorrow’s early action will undoubtedly be focused on Mr. Bernanke’s comments this evening and their “meaning” especially for the markets. Eyes will also then be on one of the features of the economy Mr. Bernanke mentioned, jobs, as we get the Unemployment claims report at 8:30 am EST. I show a consensus estimate of 342K and as a reminder last week’s reading was 343K.
If things stay where they are now, the S&P 500 will be challenging the recent May closing highs on tomorrow’s open. We are not a far cry from 6/24’s lows of $1560 in the S&P 500 when many were calling for much deeper pullbacks in the market and roughly 2 weeks later we have rallied to recapture all those loses. While this last dip did threaten the longs and even breached the 50 day SMA which is something the S&P 500 had not done in a while, the trend remains higher.
The following noteworthy companies are scheduled to report earnings before tomorrow’s open: NTIC, LEDS
In analyst notes today, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) was upgraded to Buy at Citigroup with a $32 price target. Cliffs Natural (CLF) was upgraded to Buy at BB&T and Veolia Environment (VE) was upgraded to Buy at Goldman. This VE is one I have been watching and felt could be putting in a bottom. Unfortunately I was looking for lower prices but Goldman may have just taken that from me. If I were looking to dip into a position here I would use last week’s lows of $10.98 as my stop (chat link below).
