Friends
It was a rather mixed and confusing day in the stock market. Fueled by an impressive Case-Shiller report indicating that home prices are still on the rise nationwide, stocks got off to a nice start with the Dow sporting a 50 point gain in early trading. By midday, though, the buyers seemed to leave the stage and sellers pushed the Dow and the S&P into negative territory, only to see buyers reappear late in the session to push the averages back into slightly positive territory. Trading was light as market participants seem to be on hold until the FOMC meeting adjourns tomorrow afternoon.
At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down a modest 1 point to finish the day at 15,520. The S&P 500 was up less than a point to close at 1685. Gold was down $3 to trade at $1325 per ounce, while oil was down $1.44 to trade at $103.11 per barrel WTI.
As mentioned, we will see what comes out of the FOMC meeting tomorrow as traders will be parsing the language in the statement release to determine if there are any new clues as to when the “dreaded” tapering will commence. In addition we get our first look at 2nd quarter GDP (economists estimates are that the economy grew at about 1% in the quarter) and the ADP employment release. So far, similar to last week, things have been rather quiet. Let’s see if that is the case tomorrow.
Have a nice evening everyone.
