Friends
Stocks spent most of the day in negative territory (down well over 100 points at one point), and although the bulls did make a late attempt to get to positive territory the bears pushed them back. A decent first time unemployment claims number didn’t get traders’ juices flowing before the opening, and the rest of the day seemed to be just waiting for the earnings reports from J P Morgan and Wells Fargo tomorrow. In the end stocks were down for the 6th day in a row.
At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 31 points to finish at 12,573. The S&P 500 finally gave up the 50 day moving average as the index was down 6 points for the day to close at 1334. Gold was down about $4 to trade near $1571 and oil was basically unchanged with WTI trading at $85.85 per barrel.
It has been a difficult start to earnings season as many of our concerns seem to be coming to fruition. We’ll see how traders react to earnings from two major banks tomorrow. The J P Morgan conference call could sell tickets and pay off some of the huge trading loss they experienced in London. We’ll let you know how the week ends up.
Have a nice evening everyone.
