Friends
Stocks suffered a second day of losses as worries over the deteriorating situation in Iraq sent oil prices soaring and caused stock traders to hit the sell button. Once again, volume was very light, but stocks did spend the entire day in negative territory. As we have mentioned, ad nauseam, market moves tend to be caused by the unexpected. This Iraq blow up wasn’t exactly the case laid out by the bears, but they’ll take it.
At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 109 points to finish the day at 16,734. The S&P 500 was down 13 points to close at 1930. Gold was up $12 to trade at $1273 per ounce, while oil was up $2.30 to trade at $106.70 per barrel WTI.
On the economic front the weekly jobless claims was harmless, but the retail sales number was disappointing and weather can’t be blamed anymore. Let’s see if the bears can press the action as the week concludes tomorrow, or will the bulls take a stand? We’ll let you know how the week finishes out.
Have a nice evening everyone.
