Friends
At least the Italians are entertaining. You really can’t make this stuff up. The road to austerity in the southern European country was perhaps derailed today as a sexual predator and foul mouthed comedian look to upset the middle of the road candidate in the country’s election. The result may lead to another round of elections and basic political chaos in Italy. All this gave traders an excuse to sell some stocks, and after an early morning rise of nearly 50 Dow points, stocks reversed and spent the rest of the day in decisively negative territory. Monday’s have been difficult all year for stocks, but with the coming sequestration talks coming here at home, the bears just may have the high ground in the short run. The bulls look to have quite a challenge in front of them this week.
By the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 216 points to finish the day at 13,784. The S&P 500 was down 27 points to close at 1487. Gold finally rallied a little with the precious metal climbing $20 to trade at $1592 per ounce, while oil was down $.88 to trade at $92.25 per barrel WTI. Several key support levels were taken out today in the S&P, so we’ll see if they can be quickly repaired, or is this the correction that pundits have been calling for?
We get to hear from Dr. Bernanke tomorrow as he testifies before the Senate Banking committee. That, along with the bevy of economic data we will receive over the next two weeks will set the economic tone, but the newest turmoil in Europe and the sequester may be the overriding ingredients for the direction of stocks this week. Buckle up, as we mentioned last week, volatility has picked up and February is proving to be the difficult month that it commonly is. We’ll be your eyes and ears.
Have a nice evening everyone.
