March 19, 2024

China’s action spills into global markets

The Market: Stocks opened lower after China suffered its worst losing day in over 8 years but the S&P managed to find a bottom right at the 200 day SMA and has so far rallied off the lows with upside action continuing into the after market.  It will be interesting to see how China’s market reacts today and if the S&P can keep the momentum going through the overnight trading and into tomorrow’s open. Also don’t forget we have the FOMC Rate decision and Statement on Wednesday the 29th (full Economic Calendar below). Leading to the downside in today’s session…

Market Shrugs off initial gap down

Index & Sector performance 5/28/15 The Market: Today started with a gap down but the major indices on the WSC Scoreboard were able to rally back to near flat on the session with the NASDAQ (QQQ) leading to the downside.  After two very volatile session, it appeared the market used today to take a breather.  FYI, tomorrow is the last trading day of the month. Transportation (IYT) was the clear loser on the WSC Scoreboard as it finished nearly 1% lower on the session.  We generally do not look to catch falling knifes and YTD the IYT has not been…

Market rollercoaster continues

Index & Sector performance 4/1/15 The Market: For those who do not track the futures you would think that today started off with a small gap that then snowballed into something much larger but the first shot lower was actually yesterday evening when the S&P futures dropped nearly 30 points in roughly an hour.  Amazingly the index recouped nearly all the losses by the open but then started to make its way back toward those overnight lows which is the action we saw today. Monday’s Wrap noted that we were looking for a pullback in the markets and that the…

Watch out for traps

Index & Sector performance 12/9/14 The Market: The S&P 500 found itself down over 20 points within the first hour plus of trading  as traders pointed to concerns over China and Greece.  Throughout the early drop the Russell 2000 (IWM) remained strong down only a fraction of the other indices and then was the first to turn positive on the day.  The IWM’s resilience continued throughout the remainder of the trading session and finished the clear leader. Today’s action certainly feels like another Bear trap where the market looks as though it is about to start a major prolonged slide…

News & EPS will dominate week

Index & Sector performance 10/20/14 The Market: This is a very light Economic data week but don’t worry.  Earnings will more than make up for it with a Packed schedule all the way through to Friday. All the indices on the WSC Scoreboard were nicely higher but the Dow (DIA) was the clear laggard after IBM (IBM) lost over 7% due to a disappointing Q3 report which missed on revenues and EPS.  The company also announced that they would no longer be able to meet its goal of $20/share in operating EPS by 2015. Solid results across all the sectors…

SPY is sitting on the 50 day SMA

Index & Sector performance 9/23/14 The Market: U.S. led airstrikes in Syria and weaker than expected European manufacturing data helped continued weakness in the broad markets with the Russell 2000 (IWM) again leading the way to the downside.  After peaking back positive YTD in late August and into early this month, the IWM is now down 3.46%.  The NASDAQ (QQQ) was the clear winner, on a relative basis, and was helped by a strong showing in Apple (AAPL) which closed up 1.56%.  The S&P 500 (SPY) is now near, essentially at, its 50 day SMA and we are very interested…

Early volatility wanes, dull day

Index & Sector performance 6/2/14 The Market: Overall a quiet day in the market if you look at the overall performance but that does not show the early volatility the market saw when the S&P 500 futures dropped roughly 10 points at the open to only “V” bottom and spike back up near where the drop occurred.  After that it was tight trading the rest of the day leaving a small up day in the Dow & S&P with the NASDAQ and Russell 2000 closing on the downside. Today there was some drama around ISM Manufacturing PMI after it was…

Small gains break 5 day slide

Index & Sector performance 9/26/13 The Market: An early push higher on the S&P 500 was short lived and topped around 10 am EST falling all the way back to the open and even drifting into negative territory.  The market then bounced, failed and after retesting the days lows used the last hour to rally into the close. In economic news the Unemployment Claims data came in better than expected posting a 305K number when expectations were of 319K.  Unfortunately the remainder of the news was not as good with GDP coming in below expectations printing a 2.5% number when…

Daily Wrap

DJIA -59.98 (-0.46%) to 12,965.60; S&P 500 -6.72 (-0.47%) to 1,409.46; NASDAQ -8.04 (-0.27%) to 3,002.20; Today started with a small gap higher but by 10am we had lost the highs and never regained them for the rest of the day finally drifting into negative territory after lunch and pressing near lows at the close.  We had some economic data today but the number talked about the most was the weak ISM which came in at 52.5 and while estimates can be different around Wall Street we saw 54.3 as the consensus.  Oh yeah and then those people in Washington…