Citigroup reported disappointing earnings this morning, and stocks never really got going after that. The major indices all moved slightly lower on very light trading volume, and all finished at or near their lows of the day. The Dow Industrials fell 66 points (-0.6%) to 10575, the S&P 500 dropped 7 points (-0.6%) to 1221 and the Nasdaq slid 12 points (-0.6%) to 2145. The Russell 2000 was also down 5 points (-0.8%) to 659, the Dow Transports dropped 0.4%, the Dow Utilities were down 0.2% and bonds continued to show weakness, with the yield on the 5-year Treasury moving just above 4% and the 10-year climbing to 4.22%. Hmm, still no one seems overly concerned with the rising rates…
Market internals were negative, but the bulls can’t be too discouraged because of the light volume. Advances/declines were about 2 to 3 and up/down volume near 7 to 12 on both exchanges. New highs/lows were 151/25 on the NYSE and 101/17 on the Nasdaq.
Not a great deal of movement in the industry groups today, with no groups posting significant gains. Looking on the down side, we find disk drives down 1.4%, followed by banks (-1.1%) and transportation (-1.1%).
Crude oil prices fell 77 cents to $57.32/barrel. The dollar index seems to have encountered some resistance near the 90 level, today slipping 0.1% to 89.67. The price of gold held steady near $421/ounce.
