Considering that crude oil prices once again pushed up near the $55 level, the market held together reasonably well today. The Dow Industrials moved higher by 30 points (+0.3%) to 10805, the S&P 500 added 7 points (+0.6%) to 1207 and the Nasdaq gained 9 points (+0.5%) to 2051. The Russell 2000 tacked on 3 points (+0.6%) to 630, the Dow Transports gained 0.6%, the Utilities added 1.9% and the bond market got a little bounce after last weeks drubbing, moving the 10-year Treasury yield down to 4.51%.
Market internals moved back to the positive side, albeit on light volume. Advances led declines on both exchanges - 17 to 16 on the NYSE and 8 to 7 on the Nasdaq - and up/down volume numbers were even better, at nearly 2 to 1 on the NYSE and 5 to 3 on the Nasdaq. New highs continue to shrink however, with highs/lows at 81/32 on the NYSE, but still more new lows than new highs on the Nasdaq, at 54/83. The bulls would like to see those numbers start to improve.
Across the industry groups, we saw biotechs jump 5.0% on some news on a Genentech drug (those biotechs scare me - they can move up by 25-50% on news like that, but they can also lose that same amount on bad news), with airlines (+2.0%), utilites (+1.8%), REITs (+1.6%), health care products (+1.3%), oil services (+1.3%) and natural gas stocks (+1.2%) following them up. On the down side, we saw steel stocks fall 1.6% and gold & silver stocks lose 1.0%.
Crude oil prices closed in on $55 again, ending the day at $54.95/barrel. The dollar index moved higher by 0.7%, and gold prices fell to near $441/ounce.