After yesterday’s collapse of 468 Dow points in the last hour and forty-five minutes, the bearish crowd felt more emboldened and this resulted in lower stock index futures trading in the evening and early morning hours. Someone received the booby prize of selling the Dow futures 220 points worse than where they had closed.
As the morning moved closer to the opening here, the various stock index futures moved up from those lows and gave a positive indication for today’s opening. Markets did opened high and the result was a DOW that gained as much as 358 points by noon, then closed the day 164 points higher. The S&P 500 index added 2 points today and the NASDAQ dropped 8 points.
The Dow was led by CAT, 3M and UTX, which are all industrial issues. The NASDAQ was hindered by NFLX and GOOG selling off as well as PCLN.
Breadth numbers were positive at a 19/12 upside ratio and the VIX fell to 18.72, losing 1.30.
Bond yields were lower than yesterday’s rise in the 10-year Treasury which today finished at 2.91%. The dollar weakened again with the Euro at 1.232 and the Japanese yen is at 106.75. Gold idled at 1,332 an ounce and crude oil gained 1 to $62.69 a barrel.
Bond yields cooled off a bit when St. Louis Fed President Bullard said that “four rate hikes this year seems like a lot.” This statement was a contributor to higher stock prices this morning.
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 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.