Reason or Excuse?
Index & Sector performance 3/3/14 The Market: Depending on your bias you likely either believe the events transpiring with Russia “scared” the market causing it to drop today or you believe the drop was already in the cards based on the technicals and the Russian incident just gives the news something concrete to point to as the cause. While we tend to be much more in the latter than former camp, we also subscribe to the believe it doesn’t really matter as in either case we are left with what happened and the decision what to do now. The S&P…
New Year starts with a thud
Index & Sector performance 01/02/14 The Market: The first trading day of the year started in the opposite direction of 2013’s trend with the S&P 500 closing down near 17 points and essentially taking back much of the holiday drift higher that was seen. In economic data Unemployment claims came in worse than expected posting 339K vs. 334K expected. Last week’s claims were also adjusted slightly higher to 341K from 338K. The remaining released data either met or exceeded expectations including Manufacturing PMI, Construction Spending and ISM. In the News: Apple (AAPL) closed 1.41% (lower) amidst differing analyst opinions. Wells…
Market follows up gap with more gains
Index & Sector performance 9/17/13 The Market: The majority of today’s action was in the first half hour of trading when the S&P gaped slightly higher and then ran up seeing the majority of the days gains. The remainder of the day the market was able to hold those gains and drift higher on what looked to be an overall light volume day. In economic news, Core CPI came in as expected while headline CPI was actually less than expected with a 0.1% increase when 0.2% was expected. Remember headline reflects food and energy while core strips it out. Tomorrow…
Daily Wrap
DJIA -26.81 (-0.18%) to 15,091.68; S&P 500 +0.07 (+0.00%) to 1,633.77; NASDAQ +1.07 (+0.04%) to 2,982.09 Today was more active than the change on the day and even the Daily chart might show as early trading started with a small gap down and then a strong move lower until 10am EST when the S&P 500 finally bottomed and then rallied roughly 10 points to noon est where it spend the remainder of the day consolidating closing a few points off the day’s highs. In company news Monsanto (MON) received a positive Supreme Court ruling that essentially stated that Farmers cannot use MON’s seeds to create new…
Daily Wrap
DJIA -138.19 (-0.94%) to 14,618.59; S&P 500 -22.56 (-1.43%) to 1,552.01; NASDAQ -56.43 (-1.99%) to 2,781.98 Yesterday’s rally was short lived as the futures were slightly lower last night after the close and the losses picked up overnight and into the morning’s trading which then lasted the majority of the day not bottoming until just before 1pm EST. Today was a light economic data day, although there was some fed speak, and sets up into tomorrow with the week’s Unemployment claims number. I have estimates at 349K going into the number which is roughly where last week’s reading was (346K). The talk of…