Friends
The news of the day was the 5.9 magnitude earthquake that hit the east coast. Amazingly, it was felt all up and down the east coast as well as places as far away as Ohio and Michigan as well as Canada. Stocks were enjoying a nice day right before the quake, and after be “rattled” for a few minutes stocks started to reclaim their gains. The Dow Jones
Industrial Average finished the day up 322 points, while the S&P 500 closed at 1162 up 38 points for the day. After peeking its head around $1900, gold retreated to finish the day near $1827.
The Richmond Fed report today was not nearly as ugly as the Philly Fed report last week. In addition, we had no damaging news out of Europe which gave stocks the all-clear sign.
Monday and Tuesday’s trading seemed to be the calm before the storm that is Chairman Bernanke’s speech at Jackson Hole Wyoming on Friday. The anticipation of a QE3 type of announcement is being rumored, but it’s hard to believe that anyone would really expect Dr. Bernanke to deviate from the Fed’s stance of a couple of weeks ago. We continue
to watch to see if 1101 on the S&P 500 can hold as support in the near term and expect 1200 and eventually 1250 to be formidable resistance levels overhead. Technically, there is a lot of supply at those resistance levels as they were violated very quickly on the way down, therefore not allowing those who might have wanted to sell to do so.
It is sure nice to see this kind of day, especially after yesterday’s early rally basically failed late in the day. We won’t get too worked up about the move because we suspect volatility is going to be with us for a while. I suspect we still have a whole lot of economic reports to deal with over the coming weeks as well as monitoring the goings on in Europe. The earthquake shook up the east coast of the United States, maybe today’s rally will shake up the bears a little.
Have a nice evening everyone.
