Friends
Today marks the 3 year anniversary of the market bottom that was put in back on March 9th, 2009. Since then, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has risen 97%. After the debacle of 2008 and early 2009, it has been quite a climb back. Also, one year ago today, Japan experienced the earthquake and tsunami combo that caused enormous human suffering.
As we entered the day, we were on the watch for the employment report, and the non-farm payroll number came in at 227,000 new jobs created in February. The unemployment rate came in at 8.3%. Along with the employment report, we got the final results of the Greek bond swap deal. With all said and done, Greece is officially in default (finally!). Now that the CDS (credit default swaps) will kick in, we will see who holds this “insurance” and who will have to pay off on the credit event. Being a “credit event” allows these derivatives to be collected on.
The markets were somewhat uninspired by the news as the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up a meager 14 points for the day to close at 12,922. The S&P 500 did finally close at 1370 for the week, which is a good sign, having been up almost 5 points for the day. We will see if we can build on that next week. Gold was up more than $15 to close near $1714 and oil was up $.92 to close near $107.50.
With all the news, it ended up being a rather quiet day. We’ll see how markets react next week when traders have time to absorb all the different news items over the weekend.
Have a nice weekend everyone.
