March 19, 2024

The NightCap

The Market: Stocks had another tough session following a second day where the Chinese market was halted.  Chinese officials have removed the circuit breaker restrictions for tomorrow’s session and traders appear to be preparing for a volatile session but it will be interesting to see if allowing the index to freely trade will ultimately help it bottom — even if only for the short-term. Another session where no Sector saw gains but the relative outperformers were Retail (XRT), which was helped by Wal-Mart (WMT) after gaining 2.3% on the session, and Monday’s leader Utilities (XLU). Along with what happens overnight…

Rampant optimism spikes the market

Index & Sector performance 10/10/13 The Market: In case you were under a rock today.  The market exploded to the upside.  The move seemed help by some uncertainty being out of the way including the past news that Janey Yellen would be the new Fed chair and confirmation from the FOMC minutes that tapering will not likely start until the end of the year (or later).  To add on there was optimism out of Washington about a debt deal. In economic news, Unemployment claims came in far worse than expected posting a 374K when 307K was expected.  The reason the…

S&P 500 narrowly escapes with a gain

Index & Sector performance 10/9/13 The Market: Rumors out of Washington have helped drive the indices of late as investors are looking for more information regarding the government shutdown as well as who may be replacing Ben Bernanke.  News today broke that Janet Yellen will be the next Federal Reserve chairperson taking the place of Ben Bernanke at the end of January 2014.  Initial opinions seemed to be that Yellen will continue on with a more dovish stance for the Fed. Today looked as though the market could not gain traction but at 11:30 am EST the market bottomed and…