Another decent day on Wall Street saw the major indices make modest gains on decent trading volume. The Dow Industrials finished 12 points higher (+0.1%) at 10579, the S&P 500 gained 4 points (+0.4%) to 1211 and the Nasdaq had the best day, adding 14 points (+0.7%) to 2089. The Russell 2000 did better than any of the big 3, gaining 7 points (+1.1%) to 644. The Dow Transports bounced back with a 1.1% gain, the Dow Utilities fell 0.2%, and bonds rallied to push the 10-year Treasury yield down to 4.07%.
Market internals were all positive, with advances/declines 11 to 5 on the NYSE and 19 to 11 on the Nasdaq, up/down volume 11/4 on the NYSE and 7/3 on the Nasdaq, and new highs/lows 240/34 on the NYSE and 136/31 on the Nasdaq. With great internals like that, why weren’t the indices up even more than they were?? Seems like it should have been more of a blowout day than it was…
Virtually no losing groups on the day. The winners were led by gold & silver stocks, which jumped another 3.3%. They were followed by biotechs (+2.4%), steel stocks (+2.2%), computer hardware (+1.8%), commodities (+1.7%), broker/dealers (+1.5%), oil (+1.3%), oil services (+1.3%), housing stocks (+1.3%), natural gas (+1.3%), transportation (+1.2%) and chemicals (+1.2%).
Crude oil had another big day, climbing more than a dollar to $56.58/barrel. Grab your wallet. The dollar index gained 0.1% to 88.67, and the price of gold jumped to $435/ounce.