Friends
Bank of Japan doesn’t deliver! Earnings season continues to underwhelm! First quarter GDP shows little growth! Carl Icahn sells his Apple shares and warns markets could fall! Any or all of these could be today’s headlines, and any or all of them caused stocks to fall today. The anemic GDP number was not a surprise and pretty much is consistent with what we have seen for the first quarter the last few years. God knows, a tepid earning season is no surprise. That the bank of Japan decided not to rain Yen from the sky might be somewhat of a surprise, but these central banks have to have a limit somewhere-I think.
Regardless, stocks fell in early trading, recovered to erase the losses by midday, but then fell all afternoon into the close. For the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 210 points to close at 17,830. The S&P 500 was down 19 points to close at 2075. Gold was up $19 to trade at $1,269 per ounce, while oil was up $.46 to trade at $45.79 per barrel WTI.
Stocks finally cracked just a bit today. Will the bears be able to exploit today’s market weakness and get another leg down started? That remains to be seen, but the bulls’ resilience to this point has been impressive given the challenged environment we find ourselves in. Market fundamentals are under attack, and the bulls seem tethered to central banker’s easy money policies. Given today’s anemic GDP number, the bears have some ammunition to play with. Let’s see if they end up just shooting themselves with it.
Have a nice evening everyone.
