Friends
The bulls continued to display their enthusiasm for Fed Chair Yellen’s dovish comments yesterday, and drove stocks higher from today’s opening bell. After the first hour of trading, though, stocks drifted for the remainder of the trading session. The ADP number came in right about as expected with 200,000 private payrolls added, and now we wait on Friday’s jobs report. Consensus is for the non-farm payroll number to show 210,000 new jobs, the unemployment rate to remain at 4.9%, and average hourly earnings to show a small gain.
As for stocks, the bulls were able to hold onto most of the early gains as the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 83 points to finish the day at 17,716. The S&P 500 was up 8 points to close at 2063. Gold was down $9 to trade at $1,228 per ounce, while oil was up a fraction to trade at $38.29 per barrel WTI.
Before the jobs report on Friday, we get the end of the quarter tomorrow. After an awful January, and a poor beginning to February, stocks reversed course and threaten to erase all of the earlier losses and then some. We’ll see how it all plays out tomorrow, but short of an all-out collapse, one has to be impressed with the resilience of the stock market. I know, the Fed softened their stance and the easy money game was back on, but this recovery happened despite/because of sentiment being extremely negative. We’ll let you know how the quarter ends tomorrow.
Have a nice evening everyone.
