Friends
When does down 79 points in the Dow feel good for the bulls. Well, when earlier in the day the Dow was down 784 points. Stocks sold off hard again at the open and continued to cascade lower throughout the morning. Finally, it appears that the sellers exhausted themselves, and a few brave souls started to buy some stocks. Worries that a Chinese Corporate CFO being arrested in Canada and to be extradited to the U.S., would sour any hopes for a trade deal with China was coupled with the overwhelming belief that the economy is about to roll over and head into a recession, helped fuel the market angst.
By the close, the aforementioned Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 79 points to finish the day at 24,947. The S&P 500 was down 4 points to close at 2,695. Gold was up a fraction to trade at $1,243 per ounce, while oil was down $1.19 to trade at $51.70 per barrel WTI.
Despite all the hand wringing the ADP private payroll number was fine this morning with 179,000 new payrolls added in November (175,000 was the expectation), while the ISM non-manufacturing (service sector) number was better than expected. Factory orders were disappointing, so we’ll call today’s economic data mixed. Tomorrow we get the non-farm payroll number with expectations that 190,000 new jobs were created in November. All eyes will be on the average hourly wage number, as it is viewed as a inflation indicator, but the Fed seems to be backing off its relatively hawkish views on inflation that we had seen throughout the year. Let’s see how the week finishes out tomorrow.
Have a nice evening everyone.
