Citi & Retail Sales aid rally
Index & Sector performance 4/14/14 The Market: The S&P 500 started lower in Sunday’s overnight session but quickly found a bottom and moved off the lows into early trading. Met with better than expected retail sales and an earnings beat by Citigroup (C), the rally continued until just after noon ET before topping out and starting a slide back toward the overnight lows. It appeared the market was yet again faced with a late day sell off but with one hour left in trading the S&P 500 found a bottom and snapped back toward the highs of the session….
Market dips early but fights back
Index & Sector performance 1/21/14 The Market: This is the type of market that frustrates both the Bull & the Bears. Strong moves in each direction serve to whip weak traders our of their positions. After a very light futures trading session Monday with the Stock Market closed, the S&P 500 futures pressed higher in late Monday/early Tuesday trading. Just before the open the futures printed $1844 and then started to sell off right at the open. The market finally found a bottom near noon EST but only after losing roughly 18 points from the pre-market highs. The S&P 500…
LULU warns and market dives
Index & Sector performance 1/13/14 The Market: The S&P 500 meandered throughout the Sunday evening session, into Monday and even to start the trading day but then around noon EST weakness started to set in and continued to build. Around 2:30 pm EST we had reached R2 support in the future but we posted at StockTwits that this support did not look like it would hold due to the MACD’s formation. That support was indeed lost and the S&P 500 futures (ES) lost another 10 points to the day’s lows and 5 points to the close overall netting a 20+…
Triple witching tomorrrow
Index & Sector performance 12/19/13 The Market: Today trading range was rather tight after yesterday’s explosion with the entire day’s range in the S&P 500 only about 9 points. Tomorrow will be options expiration and a Triple Witching which can come with some volatility. In economic data today we sub a much worse than expected Unemployment claims number come in at 379K when 366K was expected. Other key data also underperformed expectations with Existing Home Sales missing expectations (4.9M vs. 5.04M) and Philly Fed Manufacturing Index (7 vs. 10.3). Tomorrow we get GDP and Monday 12/23 we have Core PCE,…
Small Caps lead move lower
Index & Sector performance 12/11/13 The Market: Strong down day in the market with the S&P 500, Nasdaq and Russell 2000 closing down over 1%. The Russell 2000 has been leading the charge for the year but has underperformed of late including today posting the largest loss at 1.64%. After remaining relatively unchanged in overnight and early morning trading, the market started to slip in the pre-market about an hour before the open. Losses built the remainder of the day with the S&P 500 closing near the lows of the day and through the 20 Day SMA. In economic news…
Today the quiet before the storm?
Index & Sector performance 10/31/13 The Market: Second straight down day for the S&P 500. The day was slightly more active than the closing prices might suggest as a very early up open was quickly sold down to the 1756 levels where the market bottomed around 10:30am EST and then rallied to 1768 by 2:30 pm EST. What took almost all day to gain was then lost in that last hour of trading with the S&P closing back near the earlier lows for the day at 1756. What needs to be seen is if this relatively quiet day is the…
A flat day across all the major indices
Index & Sector performance 10/28/13 The Market: A fairly lack luster day as the broad indexes chopped around with the S&P and Nasdaq closing positive while the Dow and Russell lagged. Early optimism in the S&P was quickly sold in early trading but the market was able to hold and press to new highs until a late day sell off which sent the S&P back toward unchanged for the day. In economic data we saw Capacity Utilization Rate and Industrial Production month over month beat expectations while pending home sales greatly disappointed posting a -5.6%. Tomorrow will be a much…
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…
Daily Wrap
DJIA +138.46 (+0.92%) to 15,254.03;S&P 500 +9.68 (+0.59%) to 1,640.42;NASDAQ +9.03 (+0.30%) to 2,990.79 The S&P 500 started the morning higher but spent the majority of the midday in negative territory before turning positive around 2pm EST and rallying into the close. The Nasdaq had roughly the same pattern but the Dow was able to remain positive the entire day due to the strong moves by Merck (MRK) and also Intel (INTC). In economic news, ISM came in light with a 49 reading which was below estimates and also the lowest reading in roughly 4 years. The aforementioned MRK was up today on positive news regarding…
Daily Wrap
DJIA +130.63 (+0.89%) to 14,831.58; S&P 500 +14.89 (+0.94%) to 1,597.59; NASDAQ +37.79 (+1.32%) to 2,911.14 Today was another one of those small gap and run days where the market drifted higher the entire day. There is not much else to say except it seems as though the market was happy to rally on today’s better than expected Unemployment Claims but the focus will quickly flip to the Non-Farm Employment Change numbers. I have estimates at 155K and remember last report came in at 88K. In economic news today, Unemployment Claims came in at their lowest levels in over 5 years and well below analysts expectations. …