Friends
With the disaster that we watched our neighbors to the north endure yesterday, it is very difficult to focus on anything else, but I’ll do my best to catch you up with the market’s action today. It’s Tuesday, so of course stocks were up. Yes, that is 19 Tuesdays in a row that stocks have gone up. We have attempted to explain the phenomenon over the past several weeks, so we won’t belabor the point today, but it is an amazing streak. We began trading this morning with an upward bias but that gave way by late morning. After dancing around the breakeven level midday, stocks began to rally once again buoyed by reports that Fed governors Bullard and Dudley were giving rather dovish speeches indicating that the Fed accommodative policies are likely to last for some time.
For the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 52 points to close at 15,387. The S&P 500 was up 2 points to finish the day at 1669. Gold was down $12 to trade at $1372 per ounce, while oil was down $1.02 to trade at $95.91 per barrel WTI.
Today’s entertainment came from Apple executives testifying in front of Congress, where they had to explain why they took advantage of ridiculous corporate tax laws to pay the least amount of tax that they could. How dare they? They should be good corporate citizens and pay more tax because that would be only “fair”. Now, companies should not only pay the tax that they owe, but for the good of the country maybe they should throw in a little extra. Good grief! Senator Paul wondered why Apple executives were being dragged in front of Congress, and that instead of grilling them they should be given them some kind of reward. They pay more tax than any company in America and have created thousands of jobs. Yeah, they’re the problem.
Have a nice evening everyone. Hug a loved one.
