Hey look, it did it again.
Another day, another reversal, as the major indices came down from modest gains to finish in the red for the second straight day, albeit on lower volume than yesterday’s. The media will blame today’s reversal on the release of the White House economic forecast. Blame what you want - a down day is a down day.
The Dow Industrials were off by 6 points (-0.1%) at 10477, the S&P 500 dropped 3 points (-0.2%) to 1195 and the Nasdaq fell 7 points (-0.3%) to 2060. The Russell 2000 lost 3 points (-0.5%) to 620, the Dow Transports tumbled 2.1%, the Dow Utilities edged higher by 0.1% and bonds held relatively steady, with the yield on the 10-year note edging up to 3.94%.
Market internals were mostly negative, with advances/declines 7/9 on the NYSE and 13/17 on the Nasdaq, up/down volume 4/5 on both exhanges and new highs/lows 140/31 on the NYSE and 67/41 on the Nasdaq.
No major moves to the upside today, and the losers were led by transportation stocks, which were slammed for a 2.7% loss, followed by airlines (-1.5%) and housing stocks (-1.5%).
Crude oil prices had a wild ride, spiking higher in the morning following the release of the government’s inventory data, then sold off as the day wore on, finishing down more than a dollar at $52.54/barrel. The dollar bounced higher midday, pushing the dollar index up 0.5% to 87.94. Gold hung around the $424/ounce level.
BMB Note: I haven’t been feeling that great about this rally, thinking that the action just seemed way too tired to continue, and the last two days have only made that feeling stronger. As long as the internals were holding up I thought the market could still move higher, but the reversals of the last two days are not encouraging, and the drubbing in the transports today isn’t very good news at all. Maybe we’re just in for a correction here, but things don’t feel that solid to me. Of course, a lot of stocks are still in good shape, and we don’t have a lot of real breakdowns. Yet. We’ll see where it goes.
