The market started out the day with a little enthusiasm, but settled down mid-morning and pretty much coasted into the holiday weekend, with very little action in the afternoon hours. All three major indices finished just slightly in the red: the Dow Industrials were down 12 points (-0.1%) to 10447, the S&P 500 dropped 4 points (-0.3%) to 1218 and the Nasdaq fell 7 points (-0.3%) to 2141. The Russell 2000 also dropped 5 points (-0.8%) to 663. Both the Dow Transports and Utilities were lower by 0.5%, and bonds pulled back a bit, with the 5-year yield moving up to 3.84% and the 10-year to 4.03%.
Market internals were negative on light volume. Advances trailed declines by 7 to 9 on the NYSE and 7 to 12 on the Nasdaq. Up/down volume was 2 to 3 on the NYSE and 1 to 2 on the Nasdaq. New highs/lows were 152/42 on the NYSE and 78/41 on the Nasdaq.
Very few groups finished higher, with the best being steel stocks which were up 0.6%. Many groups that were higher early in the week pulled back today, led by oil services (-2.2%), natural gas stocks (-1.9%), natural resources (-1.7%), computer hardware (-1.6%), biotechs (-1.3%), oil stocks (-1.3%), disk drives (-1.1%) and paper stocks (-1.1%).
Crude oil fell from its highs early in the week, and came back to $67.57/barrel, down $1.90 from yesterday. The dollar fell again, the dollar index down 0.3% to 86.28. Gold prices fell from morning high levels and finished the day near $443/ounce.
BMB Note: We should get a little more activity starting next week as folks return from their August vacations. Some of the energy supply issues may start to subside a bit in the next week or two, and we should get a better idea where this market is headed. On the whole, things held up pretty well in a tough week.