12/18/2008

Market Wrap

Things started quietly, but weakened as the day went on. The selling accelerated in the final hour with Dow hitting a low of -297 before a bounce back up into the close.

Most of the indices got hit — only the Utilities managed to stay above the surface:

Dow Industrials 8604.99 -219.35 -2.49%
S&P 500 885.35 -19.07 -2.11%
Nasdaq Comp. 1552.37 -26.94 -1.71%
Russell 2000 479.17 -7.42 -1.52%
NYSE Comp. 5618.18 -151.62 -2.63%
Nasdaq 100 1204.69 -21.17 -1.73%
Dow Transports 3381.68 -84.44 -2.44%
Dow Utilities 365.46 +3.43 +0.95%

Long bonds moved still higher, jamming yields down even further:
6-month: 0.15%    2-yr: 0.67%    5-yr: 1.24%    10-yr: 2.05%    30-yr: 2.53%.

Internals turned negative, with volume near yesterday’s levels. Advances/declines were 5 to 7 on the NYSE and 3 to 5 on the Nasdaq, with up/down volume about 1 to 3 on both exchanges. New highs/lows were 5/31 on the NYSE and 8/66 on the Nasdaq.

Most groups were red, with a number of commodity areas returning to the top of the list: oil services (-9.9%), steel stocks (-8.7%), REITs (-8.1%), gold and silver stocks (-7.4%), metals and mining (-6.8%), paper (-5.6%) and semiconductors (-5.5%). Hospitals (+2.9%), HMOs (+2.9%), airlines (+1.5%) and utilities (+1.0%) led a short list of winners.

Energy prices took another slide, with crude oil hitting new lows at $36.22/barrel, gasoline back below a buck at $0.97/gallon, and natural gas down to $5.55/mmBTU. The dollar bounced back up midday to 79.57. The precious metals pulled back, with gold falling to $854/ounce and silver to $10.95/ounce.

BMB Note:   Not very impressive. As I said yesterday, this market has to do more to convince me that things are going higher. Today was not really what I had in mind.

Posted: 3:09 pm

Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. Trackback URI

Leave a comment

Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

  (Not required, not displayed)