After yesterday’s horror show, things looked a little dicey for the opening today. The bluster of North Korea was in the forefront as the President tweeted that U.S. weapons are “locked and loaded”. From the markets lows, calmer heads prevailed and the three major indices managed relatively modest gains by the closing bell. The DOW ended 14 points higher, the S&P 500 added 3, and the NASDAQ gained 39 points today.
The DOW was led by nice rebounding gains in the shares of AAPL, HD and MSFT. The financials were lower once again on a weak July C.P.I. report that showed a gain of only 0.1%. The year over year gain is 1.7%…so this statistic calls into question the ability of the Fed to raise rates at all this year…and the reason financial stocks were down again today.
The NASDAQ gained despite a selloff in NVDA and SNAP on their earnings. Recently beaten down shares of AMZN and GOOG recovered in addition to AAPL and PCLN. The Russell 2000 Index of small stocks has undergone its worst week since February 2016 as it held on to a small gain today.
Breadth numbers were positive at a 19/15 upside ratio. The VIX took a shellacking…down 3%…to close at 15.49 but this pales in comparison to its huge upward move yesterday.
Despite today’s light recovery, this week is the worst one of the year.
Bond yields were slightly higher with the 10-year at 2.21%. Gold moved up a bit to $1,296 an ounce. Crude oil continued its slide intraday but found a way to end slightly higher at $48.79.8.
Next week the large retailers will be reporting. This is not something to look forward to as the second-quarter earnings season comes to an end.
Donald M. Selkin
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 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 and the Associated Press. The Daily Market Notes have been abbreviated and updated with permission from the author.