Friends
The big story of the day was the Supreme Court’s ruling to basically uphold Obama Care. Stocks had already begun the day in decisively negative territory, so the ruling that hit the wires after 9:00 our time, really did not have that much of an effect on stocks. We were headed for a negative day anyway. I wasn’t really sure why we were up yesterday. But in the last hour after being down more than 150 points most of the day, rumors out of the EU summit turned stocks around and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down a mere 25 points to finish the day at 12,602. The S&P 500 was down less than 3 points to close at 1329. Gold was down $21 to trade at $1557 per ounce, and oil was creamed again, as WTI was down $1.76 to trade near $78.45 (go fill up for the Fourth of July holiday).
In other economic news, the final look at 1st quarter GDP showed the number remained at a 1.9% growth rate. The weekly jobless claims number continues to inch back towards the 400,000 level that we had hoped we had left behind some time ago. Maybe not. With today’s ruling on Obama care, and the inevitable rally cry from the republicans, the political wrangling has only just begun. That can’t be good for employment as we move forward. Talk about uncertainty.
Our attentions now will be on the EU summit and what comes out of there. Next week we’ll get the June non-farm payroll number and the following week begins earnings season. Expect market gyrations like today to continue with every rumor or piece of news out of Europe. Tomorrow is the last day of the quarter. We’ll see how we end up.
Have a nice evening everyone
