Friends
The Italian bond auction, that everyone was waiting on, went fairly well, and combined with an “ok” domestic initial jobless claims number of 381,000 (vs. expectation of about 375,000), traders had enough decent news to stake a rally in stocks. For the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 135 points, recapturing most of yesterday’s losses to close at 12,286. The S&P 500 was up 13 points to finish the day at 1262, which is just above the 200 day moving average and just slightly positive for the year. Gold was down more than $16 to close near $1547, and oil was up slightly to close near $99.64 per barrel WTI.
It would be nice to see the Dow close comfortably above 12,000 tomorrow to end the year, and more importantly see the S&P 500 stay above its 200 day moving average (around 1258) and also stay positive for the year. I suspect trading will be painfully slow tomorrow, but we’ll let you know how everything finishes out the year.
Have a nice evening everyone.
