Friends
Though Fed Chair Powell reiterated the Fed’s dovish stance testifying before the House Committee on Financial Services, stocks drifted somewhat aimlessly during today’s trading session. Only the big tech names such as Apple, Microsoft and Google have been pushing to new highs in recent days. This type of narrow participation with a handful of names accounting for the market averages pushing higher was a characteristic of the markets in recent years, but has not been the case this year. It’s great if you own these few names, but we like to see broader participation in the market averages push to new highs.
By the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 44 points to finish the day at 34,933.The S&P 500 was up 5 points to close at 4,374. The Nasdaq Composite Index was down 32 points to close at 14,644. Gold was up $17 to trade at $1,827 per ounce, while oil was down $2.55 to trade at $72.70 per barrel WTI.
We are working our way through the banks earnings, so far pretty impressive, but the shares of the banks have slumped. Some of that can be attributed to the recent dip in interest rates and some can be attributed to the fact that these stocks have basically doubled in the past year. We’ll start getting into a more broad spectrum of earnings next week. In the meantime let’s see how the rest of this week goes.
Have a nice evening everyone.
