Friends
It was a strange day for stocks. Apple had great earnings after the close yesterday, so we knew going into trading this morning that its shares were going higher, and because it is one of the 30 stocks in the Dow, that the Dow was likely to be higher at the opening. Indeed, the Dow did open higher, but Nasdaq went the opposite direction as Amazon, Facebook and Google all traded down. By the afternoon, things had reversed with Amazon, Facebook and Google all recovering from their losses while other parts of the market gave up their gains. Apple itself remained higher for the day and accounted for much of the Dow’s gains. Basically, a mixed bag.
For the day the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 52 points to close at 22,016. The S&P 500 was up 1 point to finish the day at 2,477. Gold was down $7 to trade at $1,272 per ounce, while oil was up $.35 to trade at $49.51 per barrel WTI.
The ADP private payroll number was good this morning which leads us into Friday’s non-farm payroll number. The consensus estimate is that 178,000 new jobs will have been created in July. Tomorrow, we get Factory Orders, PMI Services Index, and ISM non-manufacturing Index. Let’s see how the rest of the week finishes out and if the employment number has any effect on stock prices.
