March 19, 2024

China & Buffett support stong session

The Market: A strong overnight session in China which was triggered by changes to the latest monetary policy report and also on reports that China will overhaul state-owned enterprises helped get the market started and then Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A, BRK.B) helped fan the fire by first purchasing Precision Cast Part (PCP) for $235/share in cash and then during an interview noted that he likes IBM (IBM) and answered a question about if he is buying that people should check the SEC filings in the coming days.  The Dow (DIA) led today’s rally. Energy (XLE) was the biggest…

Heartfelt thank you to our Vets!!!

Index & Sector performance 11/11/14 The Market: A Heartfelt thank you goes out to all of the past, present, and future service men and women who work each day to keep us safe.  Without you, what we have and unfortunately often take for granted each and every day would not exist.  Almost zeros across the board as it was a relatively uneventful trading session.  Maybe the clearest example of how uneventful is that the entire trading day’s range on the S&P 500 was 6 points and volume was again light. As noted last night, we still view the short term…

Another flat session overall

Index & Sector performance 7/24/14 The Market: Another relatively flat session across the broad major indices as earnings continue to drive most individual stock movements. The NASDAQ (QQQ) and S&P 500 (SPY) have both managed to breakout to new 52 week highs this week and hold those breakouts so far but the S&P 500 Equal Weight index (RSP) and Dow (DIA) have yet to follow.  The Russell 2000 (IWM) is up on the week but far from new 52 week highs and also seems vulnerable to fill the downside gap left from Tuesday. Speaking of the IWM, we noted in…

S&P takes back overnight losses plus

Index & Sector performance 5/5/14 The Market: The S&P futures moved lower in the Sunday overnight session attributed to weak economic data out of China as well continued unrest in Ukraine.  The futures continued lower throughout early trading Monday but found a bottom right at the open on an initial spike lower to 1860.50ES which was quickly bought and the index started a march higher reaching 1880ES by 2:30 pm ET.  The index spent the last hour consolidating the near 20 point intraday rally.  If 1872ES holds in overnight trading it appears the index could look to make a move…

The Calm before Jobs data storm?

Index & Sector performance 1/9/14 The Market: A mixed consolidation day in S&P 500 saw the futures up in the pre-market only to sell off at the open.  That sell off persisted until 11am EST losing roughly 15 S&P points from the pre-market highs and then the S&P bottomed and staged a rally which didn’t make it back to the pre-market highs but did take back more than half of what was lost. In Economic data today, Unemployment claims came in better than expected posting a 330K number when 337K was expected but the previous week was revised about 6K…

China fears helped send market lower

Index & Sector performance 10/23/13 The Market: Today was a gap own and meander day where the majority f the losses were seen in very early trading and the rest of the day was mostly choppy. News attributed the drop to tightening fears out of China which sent international markets lower but as we have discussed here the market seemed ripe for a pullback.  More lower.. In economic data there was not too much today with import prices coming in roughly as expected while the Home Price Index was well below expectations (0.3% vs 0.8%) .  Yesterday we had the…