The End Of A Difficult Week For The Markets

Jul 24, 2015 | Market Commentary

Friends

It was a difficult week for stocks, as earnings reports and investor expectations didn’t seem to match up. More earnings after the close yesterday and before the opening today led to more disappointment. Once again, there was an outlier (today was Amazon) but for the most part, the advance that we saw after the Greece deal has evaporated.

For the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 163 points to close at 17,568. The S&P 500 was down 22 points to close at 2079. Gold was up $4 to trade at $1098 per ounce, while oil was down $.33 to trade at $48.12 per barrel. As commodities continue to crash, stocks continue the pattern of advance and decline, as once again the Dow finds itself in negative territory for the year, and the S&P just barely in the black.

On the economic front the new home sales number was surprisingly weak this morning, and yes it is a number that tends to be volatile, but this was not expected after the rash of good housing numbers in recent days. We have another full week of earnings ahead, so buckle up. We’ll get through this. The weakness in stocks is not really a surprise as estimates have been coming down, yet share prices had not. Stay tuned.

Have a fun weekend everyone.

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