Friends
With a backdrop of students protesting for more democratic freedom in Hong Kong, stocks tumbled decisively in early morning trading with the Dow falling as much as 178 points. But as the day wore on, bargain hunters started picking at the pieces and prices recovered some in afternoon trading.
By the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 41 points to finish the day at 17,071. The S&P 500 was down 5 points to close at 1977. Gold was up $1 to trade at $1216, while oil was up $.90 to trade at $94.44 per barrel WTI.
It’s going to be a very busy week with appearances and speeches from Fed officials and a bevy of economic data points, not to mention the never ending global uneasiness. Today we got a weaker than expected Pending Home Sales number, and tomorrow we get the Case-Shiller Home Price Index. In addition, we get Chicago PMI and Consumer Confidence tomorrow. On Wednesday we get ADP Employment Report, PMI Manufacturing Index, ISM Manufacturing Index and Construction Spending. Thursday brings us Weekly Jobless Claims and Factory Orders, and finally on Friday we get the all-important Non-Farm Payroll number, PMI Service Index and the ISM Non-Manufacturing Index. As I said, we have a very busy week ahead of us. Of course, after this week we’ll be entering earnings season, so both the bulls and the bears will have a lot of information from which to form a game plan.
Stay tuned. We’ll let you know how the week plays out.
Have a nice evening everyone.
