Friends
Stocks stumbled out of the gate for 2021 as market participants appeared a little concerned about tomorrow’s Senate elections in Georgia. Standard thinking is that if the Republicans capture both or at least one of those seats the markets will respond favorably. Of course, how the markets react to things has been convoluted for a while now so we’ll just have to see if markets will drop if the Democrats win both seats (or will the markets drop anyway, just because we haven’t seen a pullback of any consequence since the March 2020 lows?)
Stocks did finish off the lows of the day, but by the close the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 382 points to finish the day at 30,223. The S&P 500 was down 55 points to close at 3,700. The Nasdaq Composite Index was down 189 points to close at 12,698. Gold was up $52 to trade at $1,947 per ounce, while oil was down $1.11 to trade at $47.41 per barrel WTI.
The other concern that investors have is the somewhat slow start to the vaccination process. Remember, the markets have been expecting that by this coming summer things will be getting back to normal. If this vaccine rollout continues to be less than impressive, that could possibly put that time table in jeopardy (not something that I am predicting by the way). So, we begin 2021 with some questions. But these questions should be answered rather quickly. Stay tuned.
Have a nice evening everyone and welcome to 2021.
