Wow, that was some day, eh? After a day like today, it’s hard to place much meaning in any of the numbers, but here they are anyway:
The markets seemed to be cruising along, enjoying some nice gains on the day, when about 2:30 ET a brick wall jumped out in the road and BAM!! It was all downhill from there. BMB has no real idea what caused the selloff (as if anyone ever really knows) — some say the market was spooked by some of the early exit poll results. Maybe investors just didn’t want to hang on to their positions overnight with the election still in the balance. No way to know for sure.
The Dow, which had been up between 50-70 points most of the day, finished down more than 18 points (-0.2%). The Nasdaq managed to hang on to a 5 point gain (+0.25) to finish at 1985, but had been above the 2000 level earlier in the day. The S&P 500 was unchanged on the day and the Russell 2000 dropped 0.4%. Volume was relatively strong.
Internals didn’t have enough time to turn all the way around, so they still finished slightly to the upside, and new highs again outnumbered new lows by almost 6 to 1.
More losers than winners today in the industry groups. Airlines, if you have chosen to mess with them, were up another 3.8% today, and the broker/dealers picked up 1.1%. On the downside yet again were commodity-related stocks. Gold stocks dropped 2.4% and oil services 2.4%. Taking a rare hit these days were transportation stocks (-1.8%) and utilities (-1.8%). Also slipping by 1.5% were biotechs and natural gas.