March 19, 2024

Weak ADP data helps market gap

The Market: The market gapped and continued higher for the first hour of trading which the news attributed to a weak ADP number which could keep the Fed from raising interest rates anytime soon.  After the first hour of trading the major indices began to lose ground and, while they all finished up on the day, they were all also well off their highs. Leading on the WSC Scoreboard was Retail (XRT) which was the only sector to finish up by over 1% followed closely by Technology (XLK) which closed up 0.97%.  The only two losing sectors on the day…

XLU stands out in today’s action

Index & Sector performance 2/18/15 The Market: A choppy session overall which ended up finishing flat.  Some negative divergence is building on the S&P 500 60 minute chart but, even when it leads to a pullback, the divergence can exist for many day.  We wouldn’t be surprised to see the index continue to meander and drift higher for the remainder of the week into Options expiration. In individual sectors it was the Utilities (XLU) leading the way and by a wide margin finishing up 2.37%.  We would be watching the XLU closely here to see if it can build on…

Retail leads low volume rally

Index & Sector performance 6/4/14 The Market: Another very light volume trading day led by the NASDAQ and Russell 2000 while the S&P 500 climbed to a new closing high. There were mixed results across the sectors but a stand out was the Retail (XRT) sector which closed up 0.76%.  Walgreen (WAG) finished up 4.19% to a new closing high on better than expected Q3 sales along with solid same-store-sales up 5.1%.  A more speculative name in retail also moving higher today was RadioShack (RSH) which closed up 8.63%.  For those looking for a speculative trade, RSH is a prime…

Daily Wrap

DJIA +2.77 (+0.02%) to 14,450.06; S&P 500 -3.74 (-0.24%) to 1,552.48; NASDAQ -10.55 (-0.32%) to 3,242.32 Another day where not much was on the US economic data calendar expect the NFIB small business survey which came in slightly higher than expected but nothing really of note.  As has been a trend lately, the Dow lead all major indices hovering just above or below even for the day and for the most part it was a relatively quiet day. This is not actually surprising action for where the markets have been.  We are up roughly 9% YTD on the SPY (S&P 500 SPDR ETF) and nearly 11%…