April 24, 2024

China growth concerns weigh on market

Index & Sector performance 9/22/14 The Market: The markets started the week off lower with many pointing to weak economic data out of China as well as comments from the Chinese finance minister stating there will be no major policy adjustments as the cause.  Leading the way lower was the Russell 2000 (IWM) which remains the clear underperfomer for the year with the Dow (DIA) not too far behind but at least positive YTD. Multiple sectors closed the day down over 1% with Retail (XRT) leading the way finishing the session 1.59% lower.  The XRT is now again over 1%…

Market continues higher on low volume

Index & Sector performance 8/13/14 The Market: Monday was a solid up day to follow-up on Friday’s move but one concerning aspect was how the indices finished noticeably off the intraday highs.  That trend continued taking the indices lower in Tuesday’s session but the losses were contained and today it was back up as all 4 indices on the WSC Scoreboard finished higher with the NASDAQ (QQQ) leading the charge. In individual sectors there were three standouts with HealthCare (XLV) the biggest winner finishing the day up 1.21% followed by a tie for second with both the Industrials (XLI) and…

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…

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…

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…

Daily Wrap

DJIA -22.50 (-0.15%) to 15,082.62; S&P 500 -6.02 (-0.37%) to 1,626.67; NASDAQ -7.12 (-0.24%) to 2,961.12 The markets got started with another better than expected Unemployment claims number that came in at 323K, 10K below the consensus estimates and 1K lower than the previous month’s number.  If I remember correctly, that previous number was the lowest print in many years and one week later was taken out.  Otherwise the action was choppy and initially we rallied off the better than expected data until topping just before 10am EST and then moving lower to 10:30am.  After ultimately finding a bottom the market floundered unjust before 1pm when…