Friends
Early in the day, we received a plethora of positive economic news including a better than expected durable goods number, a decent Richmond Fed number and another decent consumer confidence number. In addition, we now have seen home prices rise for the last 6 months. All this positive economic news had little effect on stock prices early in the day as we seemed destined to just meander along around the flat line for the day. But, by early afternoon both Senator Reid and Senator McConnell both took to the microphones and indicated that things may not be going quite so smoothly in the ‘fiscal cliff ” talks. As we have indicated for days now, comments by politicians and rumors will be what moves markets for the balance of the year, and today was a good example.
After hugging the break even line most of the early part of the day, stocks sold off just as ole Harry Reid fired off his “little progress” comments and by the end of the session the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 89 points to close at 12,878. The S&P 500 was down 7 points to finish the day at 1398. Gold was down $8 to trade at $1741 per ounce, while oil was down $.55 to trade at $87.18 per barrel WTI. The S&P closed just under the 1400 level. Let’s see if we can get that back tomorrow.
Well, the politicians are back in town and the markets are back to being focused on them. Oh boy!
Have a nice evening everyone.
