Friends
Today the bears finally inflicted some damage. After a couple of soft weeks of trading, the bears had really not made much headway in terms of a market correction, but despite the “budget deal” out of Congress, stocks showed quite a bit of weakness today. Both the S&P and NASDAQ lost more than 1% for the session and the Dow was just shy of that. Other than the Fed meeting next week, there is not much that market participants can sink their teeth into this week, and buyers seem to have become uninterested.
By the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 129 points to finish the day at 15,843. The S&P 500 was down 20 points to close at 1782. After yesterday’s rally, gold was down $7 to trade at $1253 per ounce, while oil was down $1.10 to trade at $97.41 per barrel WTI. Both 1800 on the S&P and 16,000 on the Dow were decisively violated to the downside. Perhaps the bears have something going here.
Without much this week in terms of economic news, traders are left to deal with their own imaginations (maybe the Fed will taper next week?). We mentioned last week that we could be in line for a needed pullback, and that could set up a late Santa Claus rally. Let’s see how much damage the bears can do. They have the bulls’ attention, that is for sure.
Have a nice evening everyone.
