The NightCap
The Market: A late day rally helped the market close well off the midday lows but all 4 major indices on the WSC Scorobard still finished down near or over 1%. Based on the recent action, we expect to see lower levels in the short-term. In individual sectors, Retail (XRT) was the hardest hit sector on the WSC Scorboard with Priceline (PCLN) finishing down over 9% on the session after reporting EPS which beat expectations but guidance that fell short. We will be watching Ctrip.com (CTRP) which is scheduled to report EPS tomorrow, November 10th, after the close — CTRP…
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…
Eurozone helps U.S. go green YTD
Index & Sector performance 1/8/15 The Market: The Dow (DIA), S&P 500 (SPY) and Nasdaq (QQQ) are all green for the year as of today’s close with the Russell 2000 (IWM) lagging down 0.8%. Considering there have only been about 5 trading days in the new year, this is not saying much but the recent 2 day recovery is impressive and reminiscent of what we saw all 2013 and 2014. Helping the U.S. market today was statements from Mario Draghi that the ECB will discuss adding more or new monetary stimulus at their next rate meeting in two weeks. This…
BIIB helps XLV finish up over 26% YTD
Index & Sector performance 12/2/14 The Market: It was a solid session following Monday’s drop with the Russell 2000 (IWM) clearly leading and with advancers leading decliners by roughly 2:1. In Individual sectors it was Transportation (IYT) leading up 1.18% followed closely by Energy (XLE), which is still trying to recover from Friday’s big gap down, up 1.16%, and lastly HealthCare (XLV) which finished 1.12% higher and is now up over 26% year-to-date. Helping the XLV today was Biogen Idec (BIIB) which gained 6.43% on positive results from an early-stage Alzheimer’s drug trial. BIIB is a name to watch. Above…
Quiet start to the month
Index & Sector performance 11/3/14 The Market: The market started the day slightly higher building on last week’s extremely strong session but the market ran out of steam in the short term and the S&P 500 started pulling back in afternoon trading finishing flat on the session. All in all it was a low volume quiet session but the Bulls can point to the fact that they didn’t give ground after reaching new highs. We do not expect the remainder of the month to be as quiet as today and would plan for swings in both directions much like October…
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…
Decline….What Decline?
Index & Sector performance 1/15/14 The Market: The vast majority of today’s action was on the open where the S&P 500 gaped higher and ran until 11am EST which marked the highs of the day. The remainder of the day stayed in a 5 point range from the 11am highs as the market digested the strong reversal rally which has gained roughly 35 S&P points since Monday’s lows. In Economic Data, Headline PPI slightly missed expectations while Core PPI beat. The Beige Book reiterated an overall positive outlook on the economy showing moderate growth. Tomorrow traders will be most focused…
Fed open to scale back causes pullback
Index & Sector performance 11/20/13 The Market: Initial optimism on better than expected economic data pre-market saw early selling as the S&P pulled off the highs of the day in the first hour of trading and then the market meandered waiting for the Fed minutes to be released. After the 2pm EST announcement the market began selling off as the Fed showed they are prepared to scale back on the rate of asset purchases. The S&P 500 was able to use late trading to close a few points off the lows of the day. In economic data, Core CPI came…
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…
Great Initial Claims data but….
The Market: The markets saw a small down day which after the recent bullish action only seems to be best described as a consolidation. The leading sector of the day was technology which saw Apple (AAPL) Verizon (VZ) and AT&T (T) lead but the next best sector was the Consumer Staples and the standout there was Walgreen (WAG) which caught an upgrade to Conviction Buy at Goldman Sachs. In economic data there was a great deal of data including the often watched Initial Jobless Claims which came in better than expected posting a 292K number vs the consensus estimate of…