Friends
Don’t look now, but the year is not off to a very good start for stocks. For whatever reason one wants to assign to it, the market seems to be very tentative at the moment. Perhaps it’s not a selling spree, but it sure doesn’t seem like buyers have much of an appetite at the moment. Maybe we still have a hangover from Friday’s disastrous employment report, or market participants are just jittery about earnings season.
For the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 179 points to close at 16,257. The S&P 500 was down 23 points to finish the day at 1819. Gold was up $6 to trade at $1253 per ounce, while oil was down $1.12 to trade at $91.60 per barrel WTI.
The financials kick off the bulk of earnings season this week, so it will be interesting to see how the banks are doing. Are slightly higher interest rates helping? Is loan growth slowing? What about Real Estate? These reports will probably carry a lot of weight as to the direction of stocks this week. Stay tuned.
Have a nice evening everyone.
