March 19, 2024

The NightCap

The Market: We expected to see a tight trading range until the FOMC statement but instead we saw buyers in advance of the statement as the S&P 500 (SPY) pressed higher.  The the announcement came and there was a sharp sell-off but buyers came right back and all 4 major market indices on the WSC Scoreboard finished above the pre-FOMC announcement highs. As was expected by many, the FOMC left the Fed Fund Rates unchanged but, based on the comments, it appears a rate hike is on the table for December if the data warrants.  We also saw the committee…

Lots of data yields flat finish

Index & Sector performance 7/30/14 The Market: Lots of Economic Data/announcements in today’s session but when the dust settled it was surprisingly a flat session with the NASDAQ (QQQ) and Russell 2000 (IWM) leading while the Dow (DIA) finished slightly lower and the S&P 500 (SPY) finished slightly higher. The leading sector on the WSC Scoreboard was Retail (XRT) finishing the day up 1% however Retail remains the only individual sector on the WSC Scoreboard that is down for the year.  The laggard was the Utilities (XLU) and decisively so finishing the day down 1.69%.  We remain interested in some…

Russell clear winner in mixed start to week

Index & Sector performance 6/9/14 The Market: All 4 major indices on the WSC Scoreboard started the week moving higher picking up where they left off last week including the small cap Russell 2000 which continued its recent outperformance.  The quick start soon came to an end when each index made a top around noon ET which was never again revisited in today’s trading.  While the Russell 2000 managed to finish respectfully higher for the day, the rest of the indices were flat to slightly down. We noted in Friday’s  report last week that the S&P 500 closed outside of…

GDP disappoints but market ignores

Index & Sector performance 4/30/14 The Market: As you can see in the table below, the U.S. Q1 GDP number came in well below expectations.  While Q1 was not expected to be a high growth quarter, clearly analysts did not expect a near negative number.  Certainly the colder than expected weather could have and likely did play a role but on our opinion you cannot completely blame a miss like this on the weather. So why might traders and investors be willing to look past this data besides the weather?  Possibly because a number like this allows the Fed to…

S&P finds support at 20 day SMA

Index & Sector performance 3/12/14 The Market: Overnight trading took the S&P 500 futures index down to our target region of $1857-50 with the low of the session printing $1853.75ES right near the open which correlated with the S&P 500 cash index touching the 20 day SMA.  From there we bounced and then spend the rest of the day consolidating in a flag which has broken to the upside in after hours but with not much gusto.  Until the index clears the $1870-72.50ES area we will consider the potential for more downside. Tomorrow is the heaviest day of the week…

Daily Wrap

DJIA +83.86 (+0.58%) to 14,539.14; S&P 500 +8.71 (+0.56%) to 1,563.23; NASDAQ +13.81 (+0.43%) to 3,258.93 Nothing much happened today, another day another Dow high, you know, the usual.  Today at the close actually would not have been a bad spot to try and take a small short as a spec trade into tomorrow.  Nothing big, nothing saying a top is in but just 10 straight days up in the Dow is somewhat extended. Economic data today included U.S. jobless claims which came in lower than expected at 332K. Stock of the day today was E-Trade Financial (ETFC) which lost over 8% after…