Friends
Stocks sold off early today and spent the afternoon trying to recover with little success. The culprit seems to be the quick move up in the yield of the ten year Treasury Note from about 2.30% to above 2.60% in the past week and a half. At some point in our lifetime, interest rates will rise. It’s been so long, market participants don’t seem to know exactly what stocks will do when that happens. We’ll find out sooner or later.
As for today, by the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 61 points to finish the day at 16,987. The S&P 500 was down 11 points to close at 1985. Gold was down $8 to trade at $1230 per ounce, while oil was down $.60 to trade at $92.23 per barrel WTI.
It was a difficult week for the bulls. They never could muster any kind of momentum at all, so we’ll give this week to the bears. We have never been against a little pull back in stocks. It’s been 3 years since we have had any real downturn, so it could happen at any time. A pullback could give earnings a chance to catch up to recent price movement, and that, in the long run, is healthy. Let’s see what next week has in store for us.
Have a great weekend everyone.
