Friends
As traders wait for a resolution on Greek debt, the focus was on earnings today. We had a bevy of tech earnings after the close yesterday, including good reports from IBM, Microsoft and Intel and one awful report from Google. In addition to many regional bank reports, today we got reports from the likes of General Electric (just ok) and Schlumberger (very good). All in all the earnings season is off to a lukewarm beginning.
Stocks were mixed most of the day but the Dow Jones Industrial Average (driven by big gains in IBM and Microsoft), ended up nicely for the day. The S&P just barely squeaked out a gain and the Nasdaq was actually down. The Dow finished the day up 96 points to close at 12,720. The S&P 500 was up less than a point to finish the day at 1315. Gold was up $12 to finish near $1666 and oil was down over $2 to close near $98.32.
On technical basis we did close nicely above that 1308 level that we were watching on the S&P 500 and the Dow is only 150 points away from its 52 week high. Even though trading has been light and volatility low, we have had a nice beginning to the year. Let’s see if we can keep it going next week as earnings season is now in full gear.
Have a nice weekend everyone.
