The market managed to put together another solid performance today on decent volume. The S&P 500 gained 8 points (+0.7%) to eke out another multi-year closing high and the Nasdaq had a big day, picking up 28 points (+1.3%) to 2173 in its attempt to regain its December high levels. But the Dow Industrials remain the non-confirming sticks-in-the-mud: while the Dow did gain 71 points (0.7%) to 10647, it remains a few hundred points shy of its December (10895) and March (11027) highs. The Russell 2000 fell just short of besting its recent high, adding 10 points (+1.6%) to 669. The Dow Transports are also still lagging the rest of the indices, picking up only a 0.1% gain today, while the Dow Utilities added 0.5%. Bonds rallied a bit too, pushing those yields back down: the 5-year to 3.99% and the 10-year to 4.19%.
Market internals were strong, with advances leading declines by better than 2 to 1 on both exchanges and up/down volume running nearly 2 to 1 on the NYSE and nearly 4 to 1 on the Nasdaq. New highs/lows were 221/18 on the NYSE and 151/21 on the Naz.
A look across the industry groups shows an awful lot of green: paper stocks (+4.5%), oil services (+3.7%), steel stocks (3.6%), commodities (2.0%), internets (+2.0%), software (+1.9%), airlines (+1.9%), networking (+1.9%), computer tech. (+1.8%), computer hardware (+1.7%), semiconductors (+1.7%), natural gas (+1.6%), broker/dealers (+1.5%), disk drives (+1.3%), housing (+1.2%), retail (+1.2), oil stocks (+1.2%) and chemicals (+1.2%). The only group moving lower was the HMOs, which have struggled of late, falling another 1.2% today.
Crude oil was nearly unchanged at $57.46/barrel. The dollar rallied early then fell, with the dollar index finishing at 89.90. Gold prices moved slightly lower to around $420/ounce.
The market still looks good here - but the failure of the Industrials and the Transports to confirm the rally has got to be a concern for the bulls. And days like today just keep driving the sentiment indicators into the ground as the bullishness grows…
