Friends
Stocks sold off for the fourth session in a row, but the bulls at least were able to lessen the damage in the last hour of trading and reduce the Dow losses from triple digits to double digits. Nevertheless, the bears seem to be in control as we enter Fed Decision Day tomorrow. Remember, the two day FOMC meeting concludes tomorrow and we’ll get the Fed Statement at 1:00 our time. Of course, we are not expecting a rate hike tomorrow, but traders will be parsing every word of the statement and watching closely the Chair’s press conference.
As for today, by the close the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 57 points to finish the day at 17,674. The S&P 500 was down 3 points to close at 2075. Gold was up $1 to trade at $1,288 per ounce, while oil was down $.29 to trade at $48.59 per barrel WTI.
One small piece of good news was the retail sales number that came out this morning which was much better than expected. Hopefully the slowdown we saw over the past few months has begun to reverse. Another piece of “good” news was the import/export prices number which was higher than expected which is actually a good thing. We desperately need some inflation. Let’s hope these numbers are a precursor of better things to come, which might allow the Fed to move later this summer, which they very much want to do. We will see.
Have a nice evening everyone.
