Oh boy. Apparently the market’s turnaround midday yesterday didn’t mean squat, as today the major indices fell right back down near their support levels in a pretty pitiful performance. The Dow finished down 104 points (-1.0%) at 10404, the S&P 500 fell 14 points (-1.1%) to 1174 and the Nasdaq took another drubbing, dropping 31 points (-1.6%) to close at 1974. The Russell 2000 shed 10 points (-1.7%) to 603, the Dow Transports suffered another big breakdown, falling 2.7%, the Dow Utilities lost 0.7% and bonds were down, then up, finishing nearly unchanged on the day, with the 10-year Treasury yield at 4.37%.
As you might expect, market internals were decidedly negative. Volume increased from yesterday on the NYSE but declined on the Nasdaq. Advances/declines ran about 9 to 23 on both exchanges, up/down volume came in at 2 to 7 on the NYSE and a dreadful 3 to 17 on the Nasdaq. New highs/lows were 52/50 on the NYSE and 36/101 on the Nasdaq.
The only groups managing to hang on today were health care issues, with drug stocks gaining 1.4% helped by Merck’s raising of Q1 guidance. On the down side, there was plenty: steel stocks, pummeled again for 4.7%, followed by semiconductors (-2.7%), paper (-2.7%), chemicals (-2.6%), oil services (-2.4%), transports (-2.3%), oil stocks (-2.2%), commodities (-2.0%), gold & silver stocks (-2.0%), housing (-1.9%), disk drives (-1.9%), internets (-1.9%) and broker/dealers (-1.9%). And those are just the worst - there were plenty more.
Crude oil prices fell after the morning inventory data was released, dropping to $50.22/barrel. The dollar index was unchanged and gold prices held near $429/ounce.
The scene remains awfully darned ugly. The market is coming after just about everything and tearing it down, and there doesn’t really seem to be anywhere to hide. All we can do is hope that the support just below current levels holds. If not, who knows where the floor might be?
After the bell: earnings from Apple and AMD.
