Oil was the talk of the town today, setting another new record high at $63.94/barrel, helped by warnings of a terror threat in Saudi Arabia. The record high oil prices and continued high interest rates were not friendly to stocks, bringing the major indices down yet again. The Dow Industrials gave up 21 points (-0.2%) to 10537, the S&P 500 was 3 points (-0.3%) to 1223 and the Nasdaq fell another 14 points (-0.6%) to 2164. The Russell 2000 also lost more ground, losing 3 points (-0.5%) to 660. The Dow Transports held up well under the high oil prices, falling only 0.1%. The Dow Utilities dropped another 1.9% and bonds struggled as well, pushing the yield on the 5-year note up to 4.28% and the 10-year to 4.42%.
About the only good news was that volume wasn’t too heavy, but the rest of the market internals weren’t much to brag about. Advances/declines were 3/5 on the NYSE and 2/3 on the Nasdaq. Up/down volume was 7/9 on the NYSE and 1/2 on the Nasdaq. New highs/lows came in at 122/42 on the NYSE and 80/33 on the Nasdaq.
The biggest gains and losses were limited to a few groups: the energy related stocks and interest rate sensitive issues, for the most part. Moving higher were steel stocks (+2.1%), oil stocks (+1.9%), oil services (+1.3%), natural resources (+1.2%) and commodities (0.9%). Heading lower were REITs (-3.5%), housing stocks (-2.2%), biotechs (-2.1%), utilities (-2.0%) and semiconductors (-1.1%).
Crude oil touched the $64 mark for the first time, and finished at $63.94/barrel, up $1.63. The dollar was mixed against other currencies, and the dollar index finished down slightly at 87.98. The price of gold fell to near $435.
