Friends
We had another volatile day of trading, as an early 98 point gain in the Dow Jones Industrial Averages turned into a 98 point loss by the end of the session. We have seen many of these days where early gains disappear and the bulls are not able to push the averages to new highs. On the other hand, the bears can’t seem to break the back of the bulls either, so we find ourselves in somewhat of a stalemate (S&P about flat for the year). The other big news of the day was “Candy Crush” game maker King Digital Entertainment’s initial public offering, which was a flop, down about 15% for the session. These tech IPO’s have been heating up the proceedings lately, so it was kind of nice to see that nonsense cooled off a bit. Perhaps investors will get back to focusing on stocks that actually have earnings.
Anyway, by the close the Dow was down 98 points to finish the day at 16,268. The S&P 500 was down 13 to close at 1852. Gold was down $9 to trade at $1302 per ounce, while oil was up $1.01 to trade at $100.19 per barrel WTI.
On the economic front, the Durable Goods number looked better than expected on the surface, but excluding transportation the core slowed. This is becoming a challenging year for traders, as stocks are showing much more volatility than last year. Let’s see how the rest of the week unfolds.
Have a nice evening everyone.
