Friends
Wow, where do I begin? Stocks tumbled, and tumbled, and tumbled this morning until by midday the Dow Jones Industrial Average was sporting a 1000-point loss. Nasdaq was flirting with down 20% from its all-time high and small caps as measured by the Russell 2000 were actually down more than 20% from their high (official bear market territory). All the market averages were down more than 3% for the day and Nasdaq was actually down more than 4% at one point. All this appeared to be just a continuation of the negative sentiment built up over the past several weeks and culminating in a somewhat breathtaking woosh lower.
But as the afternoon rolled on the bulls rallied the troops to erase all of the earlier losses and move stocks into the green for the day. By the close the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 99 points to finish the day at 34,364. The S&P 500 was up 12 points to close at 4,410. The Nasdaq Composite Index was up 86 points to close at 13,855. Gold was up $10 to trade at $1,842 per ounce, while oil was down $1.35 to trade at 83.79 per barrel WTI.
Amazingly the Nasdaq had a 5% swing today. You don’t see that too often. Well, was that it? Are we out of the woods? Is the bear market, or whatever this is over? The easy answer is – no. Whatever this is or turns out to be, it usually is a process to get through. One reversal doesn’t usually define anything, as impressive as today was to behold. I mentioned on Friday that we would bounce at some point. It just happened to be intraday after a big woosh down. Let’s catch our breath, keep our heads about us, and see how things play out this week. We have a lot of corporate earnings to consider and even more importantly an FOMC meeting to monitor. This volatility is likely with us for a while.
We’ll have a zoom conference call to discuss the markets and this volatility in the coming days. Stay tuned for details.
Have a nice evening everyone.
