Friends
It was a very quiet day in the markets today as stocks had a slight downward bias, but volume was anemic. On the economic front, manufacturing activity was weak (Chicago PMI was 56.2 vs. expectations of 60), as was personal spending. Personal income on the other hand was a little better than expected, so we’ll call the economic data mixed. Tomorrow we’ll get the April ISM number, and of course the jobs number on Friday.
As for stocks, on this the last day of the month, the Dow Jones Industrial Average finished the day down 22 points to close at 13,213. For the month, the Dow was just about flat. The S&P 500 was down 5 points to finish the day at 1397. For the month the S&P 500 was down a little less than 1%. Gold and oil barely moved with gold ending the day at $1666 per ounce and oil at $104.79 per barrel WTI.
We enter May in a similar fashion to the past couple of years. After a good start to the year, will the battle cry be “sell in May and go away” once again? The good news is that the economy is growing (rather slowly, but growing), and corporate earnings continue to be good. On the negative side of the ledger, we must continuously deal with Europe’s problems and we are staring down the barrel of a “fiscal cliff” later this year and into early next year. Hey, no one said this was going to be easy.
Have a nice evening everyone.
