You don’t have to wait too long to experience the chop in this market, as more and more of it has shown up intra-day. After a weak open that sent the Dow down 80, stocks rode a decline in crude up during the morning, and that pushed the Dow up more than 180 points. But when crude bounced, the advance came to a screeching halt, and the Dow gave back two-thirds of those gains going into the final hour of trading, before getting a few of those points back by the closing bell.
Again, the Nasdaq is in a world of its own, as it continues to outperform the other indices, while the NYSE composite still lags pretty badly:
| Dow Industrials |
11615.93 |
+82.97 |
+0.72% |
| S&P 500 |
1292.93 |
+7.10 |
+0.55% |
| Nasdaq Comp. |
2453.67 |
+25.05 |
+1.03% |
| Russell 2000 |
754.38 |
+6.69 |
+0.89% |
|
| NYSE Comp. |
8385.97 |
+10.58 |
+0.13% |
| Nasdaq 100 |
1964.38 |
+22.36 |
+1.15% |
| Dow Transports |
5149.07 |
+78.76 |
+1.55% |
| Dow Utilities |
464.87 |
-5.03 |
-1.07% |
|
Treasuries were mostly higher, bringing yields lower:
6-month: 1.94% 2-yr: 2.43% 5-yr: 3.15% 10-yr: 3.89% 30-yr: 4.52%.
Internals were positive, but volume was the lightest we’ve seen in days. Advances/declines were 12 to 7 on the NYSE and 3 to 2 on the Nasdaq, with up/down volume 13 to 7 on the NYSE and 4 to 1 on the Nasdaq. New highs/lows were mixed for a second straight day, at 23/38 on the NYSE and 57/50 on the Nasdaq.
You can pretty much guess which groups moved back to the top of the list for the day - you know them by now: banks (+3.2%), transportation (+2.3%), homebuilders (+2.2%), retail (+2.1%), biotech (+1.8%), airlines (+1.8%), brokers (+1.7%), and REITs (+1.7%). Commodity stocks fell back after bouncing up yesterday: gold and silver stocks (-4.3%), metals and mining (-1.8%), oil stocks (-1.8%), steel (-1.4%), utilities (-1.3%) and oil services (-1.2%).
In energy, crude prices fell to retest their lows, then bounced up and finished down a buck at $115.01/barrel, and gasoline lost 2 cents to $2.91/gallon. Natural gas got smacked back down to $8.16/mmBTU after its weekly inventory report this morning. The dollar index got another boost, up to 76.70. That had the precious metals working their way back down to new lows - spot gold stands at $805/ounce and silver at $14.14/ounce.
BMB Note: Volatility is the name of the game, with the Dow moving 260 points from low to high this morning, but only getting back a few of the 250 points lost in the past couple of session.
As the comments from earlier today said, there isn’t much rhyme or reason to this market, and things like the financials, airlines, retail and homebuilders are just bouncing around from leading to lagging and back to leading again. The Nasdaq indices are still moving higher, but the NYSE composite is going nowhere. At least once we get tomorrow’s expiration out of the way, we’ll have five weeks until the next one (I think…).
What happens tomorrow, or the next day, or next week is anybody’s guess. Ultimately, I believe this move up off the lows will crap out and stocks will head lower. But for now, with things bouncing all over the place, I’ll just be waiting for the market to break out of this funk, in one direction or the other. Until that happens, I just don’t see much point in playing.
