Friends
Hopefully you received our quarterly piece today and I promise I am not going to say another thing about the Astros. As for the markets, stocks spent a good portion of the day trying to decide which way to go, but as the afternoon wore on the bears were able to move the market averages lower. Earnings season is unfolding and today drug giant Johnson & Johnson revealed just how damaging the strong dollar is to these multinational companies. The shares of J&J held in rather well as analyst seem to want to back out the currency effect when doing their evaluations. This will be a theme to watch over the next couple of weeks.
As for today, by the close the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 49 points to finish the day at 17,081. The S&P 500 was down 13 points to close at 2003. Gold was up $1 to trade at $1165 per ounce, while oil was down $.59 to trade at $46.51 per barrel WTI.
The big bank earnings start to roll out after the close and over the coming days. Talk about lowered expectations. It will be interesting to see how their shares react to their earnings reports. We’ll keep an eye on them, and all the others as they hit the tape.
Have a nice evening everyone.
