March 19, 2024

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…

Russell leads overall dull session

Index & Sector performance 11/24/14 The Market: An overall dull session with the S&P 500 (SPY) and Dow (DIA) barely moving while the NASDAQ (QQQ) and Russell 2000 (IWM) led.  As is expected for the remainder of this shortened holiday week, volume was very light. In individual sectors it was Retail (XRT) posting another great session up 1.32%.  Today the index was greatly helped by Outerwall (OUTR), operators of Coinstar and Redbox, which finished up 12.32%.  Also chipping in was Best Buy (BBY) up 2.29% and Foot Locker (FL) up 3.45%.  After spending much of the year down, the XRT…

Retail leads low volume rally

Index & Sector performance 6/4/14 The Market: Another very light volume trading day led by the NASDAQ and Russell 2000 while the S&P 500 climbed to a new closing high. There were mixed results across the sectors but a stand out was the Retail (XRT) sector which closed up 0.76%.  Walgreen (WAG) finished up 4.19% to a new closing high on better than expected Q3 sales along with solid same-store-sales up 5.1%.  A more speculative name in retail also moving higher today was RadioShack (RSH) which closed up 8.63%.  For those looking for a speculative trade, RSH is a prime…

Thank you to our Vets!

Index & Sector performance DATE The Market: Any given day stocks will make big moves but today with the bond market closed in observance of Veteran’s Day the broad markets seemed happy to consolidate.  Do not be surprised if today’s action is the calm before a strong directional move. Being that today was a Bank Holiday, there was no government economic data announced.  We did see the NFIB Small Business Index come in slightly below expectations posting a 91.6 when 93.5 was expected. Story Stocks: Merger Monday as ViroPharma (VPHM) agreed to be acquired by UK drugmaker  Shire (SHPG).  The…

Week in Review

DJIA  -35.71 (-0.27%) to 13,135.01;  S&P 500  -5.87 (-0.41%) to 1,413.58; NASDAQ  -20.83 (-0.70%) to 2,971.33; Friday’s action was red across the board and it was never in doubt.  The downside was lead by the tech and inside tech the leader down was Apple Computers (AAPL) and names inside the AAPL universe.  We had a small amount of economic data today but nothing that would have been able to or did change the course.  The bias was clearly to go home today flat or short but not long as we saw the selling pick up after 2pm as traders have…

Daily Wrap

DJIA  -2.99 (-0.02%) to 13,245.45; S&P 500  +0.64 (+0.04%) to 1,428.48; NASDAQ  -8.49 (-0.28%) to 3,013.81; Today we started with a gap higher which consolidated in an orderly fashion until just after noon when we had the release of the Fed data.  The market broke to new highs for the day but then started to give back some of the gains around 2 and then steadily trended lower the last hour finally closing just up for the day after spending a few minutes negative.  This would be a classic, buy the rumor and sell the news type action.  Even sometimes…

Daily Wrap

DJIA -89.24 (-0.69%) to 12,878.13 S&P 500 -7.35 (-0.52%) to 1,398.94 NASDAQ -8.99 (-0.30%) to 2,967.79 For the majority of the day the S&P hovered around even.  In the early trading there was a dip that was promptly bought and rallied but it wasn’t until after 2pm when the markets started to move lowered into the close and stayed that way closing near the lows of the day. The stock of the day was Monster Beverage (MNST) up over 13%.  A letter from the FDA to Dick Durbin noted that they will be conducting an investigation into the potential danger…