March 19, 2024

The NightCap

The Market: Not a great start to 2016 for the Bulls but could have been much worse if not for a late end-of-day rally.   So far in after-hours trading the market has continued higher but we will need to see if these gains hold over-night as well as into early trading tomorrow. No Sector was spared in today’s trading but the XLU was the clear relative outperformer finishing down only 0.21% followed by the worst performer for 2015, XLE, finishing down 0.41%. Tomorrow is a light Economic Data session with only Vehicle Sales being reported but later in the week…

Week starts slow – GS grounds BA

Index & Sector performance 2/23/15 The Market: Overall a flat session with the NASDAQ (QQQ) and Russell 2000 (IWM) finishing slightly higher while the Dow (DIA) and S&P 500 (SPY) finished lower.  The main drag on the DIA today was Boeing (BA) which finished down 2.26% after Goldman downgraded the name to Sell with a $132 price target. In individual sectors it was a mixed bag with the Industrials (XLI) leading to the downside finishing down 0.43% while the Utilities (XLU) led to the upside finishing up 0.68%.  As we posted tonight in the Charts section, the XLU held a…

New Ebola scare helps market off highs

Index & Sector performance 10/23/14 The Market: The market was cruising along today until roughly 2pm ET when the market turned and then started quickly losing ground.  Traders pointed to news that a doctor who had treated Ebola patients was rushed to the hospital in New York City.  The sell off was not enough to give back all the days gains but we closed well off the intraday highs. Many sectors from the WSC Scoreboard participated in the rally with the biggest gainer the Industrials (XLI) finishing up over 2% helped greatly by Union Pacific Corporation (UNP) and 3M (MMM)…

Fed gains quickly given back

Index & Sector performance 10/9/14 The Market: All the gains saw from yesterday’s Fed driven rally were taken back in today’s trading with the Dow (DIA) and S&P 500 (SPY) closing down nearly 2% while the Russell 2000 (IWM) lost 2.7%.  The NASDAQ (QQQ) was helped by Apple (APPL) which managed to post a small gain of 0.22% on the session but the QQQ’s still finsihed 1.62% lower. Some big numbers put up across the sectors led by Energy (XLE) which finished down 3.67% and is now over 4% lower on the year.  The XLE underperforming is not new but…

Lots of data yields flat finish

Index & Sector performance 7/30/14 The Market: Lots of Economic Data/announcements in today’s session but when the dust settled it was surprisingly a flat session with the NASDAQ (QQQ) and Russell 2000 (IWM) leading while the Dow (DIA) finished slightly lower and the S&P 500 (SPY) finished slightly higher. The leading sector on the WSC Scoreboard was Retail (XRT) finishing the day up 1% however Retail remains the only individual sector on the WSC Scoreboard that is down for the year.  The laggard was the Utilities (XLU) and decisively so finishing the day down 1.69%.  We remain interested in some…

Intraday swing leave only small gains

Index & Sector performance 4/28/14 The Market: After moving slightly higher in the overnight and early trading, the S&P 500 quickly dropped in the midday session before finding a bottom around 1:30 pm ET.  While the S&P fell a few points short of making it back to the earlier intraday highs, it did manage to post a small gain on the day.   The Dow led the major indices helped by a 4.2% gain from Pfizer (PFE) while the Russell 2000 closed slightly down on the day. Many big name stocks in the news including the aforementioned Pfizer (PFE) who…

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…

Waiting on Washington

Index & Sector performance 9/30/13 The Market: The lack of a deal from Washington on the impending government shutdown seemed to eight on trader’s mind.  While the S&P was able to rally after a gap down in early trading, the rally was short lived and around 1:30 pm EST the market again lost ground although was able to remain above the early morning lows In economic data we had Chicago PMI which came in slight better than expected with a 55.7 reading when 54.5 was expected.  Tomorrow we have Final Manufacturing PMI, ISM, Construction spending and Total Vehicle Sales. In…

Ben to the rescue!

Index & Sector performance 9/18/13 The Market: The clock struck 2pm EST and it is time for Big Ben and the Fed to put all the recent speculation, at least for now, to rest.  Neither changes to the current $85B bond purchased program nor the fed funds target rate.  That news sparked a near 30 point rally which ultimately closed up 23 points from the announcement. Besides the Federal Reserve rate decision, in economic data we had building permits and housing starts which both came in lower than the previous month and also below expectations but with all due respect…

Daily Wrap

DJIA -44.23 (-0.32%) to 13,910.19; S&P 500 -5.89 (-0.39%) to 1,501.95; NASDAQ -11.35 (-0.36%) to 3,142.31 Today the markets moved lower and more decisively so compared to that other down day this.  What was also interesting is that the Small Caps lead the way down and generally I like to see the Small Caps lead (along with the Techs if I can get them).  This still has to be taken in stride based on the current trend in place but the recent action definitely does highlight the need for a consolidation as I have been calling for and also that…