Friends
Market participants had corporate earnings, a hot CPI report and the Fed minutes to chew on today. Bank shares were among the few that had rallied into earnings season so it wasn’t a complete surprise that J. P. Morgan Chase shares slumped after its relatively good earnings report. As referenced, the CPI number was hot with inflation now running at an annualized rate of 5.4%. Transitory? And finally the Fed minutes gave us some insight as to what the Fed is thinking about the timing of tapering and eventual rate hikes. It appears that tapering will be announced next month and rate hikes are still about a year away, evidently.
Stocks wavered back and forth throughout the trading session but ended slightly higher. By the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down a half a point to finish the day at 34,377. The S&P 500 was up 13 points to close at 4,363. The Nasdaq Composite Index was up 105 points to close at 14,571. Gold was up $33 to trade at $1,792 per ounce, while oil was down $.13 to trade at $80.51 per barrel WTI.
The next couple of weeks will be full of earnings reports, but tomorrow we get reports from Citi, Morgan Stanley, Walgreens and Domino’s continuing this week’s appetizers. Let’s see how this week finishes out as we wait for the next couple of week’s earnings onslaught.
Have a nice evening everyone.
