Bear Mountain Bull

Another mixed-up, mashed-up mess. We should have expected as much, considering it was a short, pre-holiday session

Indices were all over the place during the day, finishing mixed. Though the Dow was up 73 points, A/D lines were still pretty red and the Russell dropped the equivalent of 110 Dow points. So was it a good day or a bad day? Looks to me like it was more bad than good.

Here are the final scores:

Treasuries were mixed, with little change in yields:
6-month: 2.03%    2-yr: 2.52%    5-yr: 3.27%    10-yr: 3.97%    30-yr: 4.53%.

The Dow may have been green, but internals remained red. Advances/declines were 1 to 2 on the NYSE and 2 to 3 on the Nasdaq, with up/down volume 2 to 3 on the NYSE and 11 to 21 on the Nasdaq. New highs were a joke: highs/lows were 1/425 on the NYSE and 7/353 on the Nasdaq. Yes, you read that right - 8 new highs, and only 1 on the NYSE.

The gains in the indices were a bit of smoke and mirrors, considering that there were more losing groups than winning ones, and the only group to gain more than a percent was the drug stocks (+1.9%). Leading the losers’ column were the HMOs (-3.1%), natural gas stocks (-2.7%), disk drives (-2.6%), oil services (-1.7%), metals and mining (-1.3%) and the banks (-1.2%).

Energy prices were higher yet again. Crude set more records, closing at $144.35/barrel. Gasoline picked up a pennty to $3.56/gallon, and natural gas moved back up to $13.48/mmBTU. The Euro-heavy dollar index rallied after the ECB finally made its call, moving up to 72.76. That pulled the PMs back a bit, with spot gold dropping to $933/ounce and silver to $18.22/ounce.

BMB Note:   I don’t give much weight to shortened days like today, but it looked to me that even despite the gains in the Dow, the broader market was still fairly weak. We’ll find out more after the long weekend.

BMB will be enjoying a little time off since the markets will be closed. For all those in the US, have a great Independence Day, and for those that may be checking in from other countries, have a great Friday!

We’ll see you all on the weekend.