Friends
Finally a bounce off of a massive oversold condition. Monday’s shortened trading session was such a mess I didn’t have the heart to send out an email as it might have ruined Christmas for some of you. But, we recovered Monday’s losses and then some today (biggest point gain, not percentage gain, ever). Stocks rallied early, but gave up the gains and fell into negative territory by mid-morning. But as the session wore on, stocks moved back into positive territory and added to the gains throughout the rest of the trading session. As I mentioned last week, bear market rallies are viscous and we were due for one at some point. This is the first time in a while that a rally wasn’t overwhelmed by sellers. Yes, I called it a counter trend rally within a bear market. I’m rooting for the damage to be done and behind us, but we likely have some work to do before we could possibly declare anything like “all is clear”.
For the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1086 points to close at 22,878. The S&P 500 was up 116 points to finish the day at 2,467. Gold was down $2 to trade at $1,269 per ounce, while oil was up a whopping $4.06 to trade at $46.59 per barrel WTI.
Let’s just enjoy today for what it is. We needed some relief from the relentless selling that we have seen in December. If we are fortunate enough to call Monday’s low the lows for the cycle, then we would likely have to test those lows a few times to confirm that they will hold. It’s way too early to make any calls along those lines. I’m just going to go home with a smile on my face today. It’s been a while.
Have a nice evening everyone.
