Friends
Today’s trading contained a series of failed rallies. Stocks got off to a nice start to the week at the opening of trading (the Dow sporting a nifty triple digit gain), seemingly following oil’s lead, but as oil gave back gains so did stocks. Of course the FOMC meeting starts tomorrow, so it’s not surprising that traders might want to lay low before the announcement on Wednesday. After all was said and done today, despite the volatility, stocks really went nowhere.
By the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 3 points to finish the day at 18,120. The S&P 500 was down a fraction to close at 2139. Gold was up $6 to trade at $1,316 per ounce, while oil was up $.26 to trade at $43.29 per barrel.
The bears are looking for recent weakness to continue, while the bulls hope that consternation over what the Fed will do will be behind us by Wednesday afternoon (whatever they decide to do about interest rates). The betting odds seem to be that there is no more than a one in four chance that the Fed raises rates on Wednesday, so a rate hike would be the surprise. We’ll let you know how things play out throughout the week. Stay tuned.
Have a nice evening everyone.
