Wow. A pretty amazing day in the markets today. Of course, you can’t tell it from looking at the closing numbers, but the market really dug in its heels in the face of terrible news out of London this morning. For starters, the market never dipped as far as the futures were indicating it might, then struggled back slowly all day and closed with a bit of a rally. The major indices, amazingly enough, all closed with gains on the day. The Dow Industrials were higher by 32 points (+0.3%) at 10302, the S&P 500 gained 3 points (+0.3%) to 1198 and the Nasdaq added 7 points (+0.3%) to finish at 2076. The Russell 2000 was up 1 point to 649, the Dow Transports fell less than 0.1%, the Dow Utilities gained 0.9% and bonds were slightly higher, with the 10-year yield at 4.05%
Market internals leaned toward the positive, and volume was good. Advances led declines on the NYSE by 10/9, but losers slightly outnumbered the winners on the Nasdaq. Up/down volume was positive on both exchanges, at just above the flat line on the NYSE but 5 to 4 on the Nasdaq. New highs/lows were 177/44 on the NYSE and 87/29 on the Nasdaq.
Housing stocks led the way higher, gaining 2.1%. They were followed by natural gas stocks (+1.8%), biotechs (+1.2%), oil stocks (+1.1%) and broker/dealers (+1.0%). Incredibly enough, there weren’t any major losers on the day.
Crude oil, after selling off hard on the initial news of the London attacks, recovered for a loss of only 55 cents, down to $60.73/barrel. The dollar made gains against the pound but fell against the yen and the Euro, causing the dollar index to slip just a bit to 90.30. The price of gold moved higher early, then settled back down around $424/ounce.