Friends
As traders wait for tomorrow’s all-important non-farm payroll number (economists are looking for about 170,000 new jobs), stocks drifted in positive territory for most of the session. Today’s weekly jobless claims number continued to show slight improvement but non-farm productivity was a bit lighter than expected. Trading seems to be defined this week by lack of sellers as much as any aggressive buying.
As it was, for the day the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 33 points to close at 14,329. The S&P 500 was up 2 points to finish the day at 1544. Gold was up $2 to trade at $1576 per ounce, while oil was up $1.11 to trade at $91.54 per barrel WTI.
As we close at new highs each day that the Dow ends in positive territory, one would think that there would be more hysteria about this record setting move. But in reality, there seems to be as much skepticism now as there was over that past four years. Yes, pundits are saying nice things about stocks, but those who actually do the buying and selling (portfolio managers) continue to be suspicious of levitating stock prices. Perhaps that’s the good news.
Have a nice evening everyone.
