The major indices all finished in the red today as we closed the books on 2016. The DOW fell 57 points, the S&P 500 dropped 10, and the NASDAQ was lower today by 48.
We can forget about those men scurrying around the floor of the NYSE yesterday wearing the funny little “Dow 20,000” hats.
Today was the first series of 3 consecutive lower days since late October. At that time, we had 9 lower days on the pre-election James Comey release of potentially embarrassing emails against Hillary Clinton.
The one economic report released today was the December Chicago Purchasing Managers’ Survey which declined by three points from the prior month. This report might have contributed to the selling in the markets today.
Despite the lower session today, the DOW finished the year with a 13% advance, its best yearly gain since 2013. The S&P 500 ended 10% higher this year, and the NASDAQ grew 8%. The big winner in 2016 was the small-cap Russell 2000 Index with a gain of 20%.
Bond yields were treading water today with the 10-year Note at 2.48%. There was a lot of action in the Euro, which shot up as high as 1.065 on a computer-generated knocking off of buy-stops in an obviously very thin holiday market. After those unfortunate buyers were satisfied at the higher levels, it fell back to its current level of 1.0516.
Despite the worst start to a market year in history, the overall bull market is now in its 90th straight month. This streak compares to the average length of 59 months for the 11 bull markets since 1949 and it is now the second longest bull market in history, surpassed only by the 1987 to 2000 beauty.
Donald M. Selkin
These are excerpts from Don Selkin’s Daily Market Notes, abbreviated and updated with permission from the author. Don Selkin is the Chief Market Strategist at Newbridge Securities Corporation, member FINRA/SIPC and provides the Fair Value analysis for CNBC each morning. The commentary provided in this Market Letter is intended to provide our customers with timely market analysis and should not be considered a research report. This Market Letter may contain, and is limited to: Discussions of broad based indices; Commentaries on economic, political or market conditions; Technical analyses concerning the demand and supply for a sector, index or industry based in trading volume and price; Statistical summaries of multiple companies’ financial data, including listings of current ratings; and, Recommendations regarding increasing or decreasing holdings in particular industries or securities. This Market Letter does not make a financial or investment recommendation or otherwise promotes a product or service of the firm. This Market Letter contains only news, facts, and commentary on information previously reported from a news source believed to be accurate and reliable by the author. These news sources include the following: Bloomberg Financial, Reuters, Associated Press.