Friends
How about that! We actually had an up day on a Monday. Maybe we have broken the trend of down Mondays that we experienced all summer. Now if you were watching this thing all day long you may have gotten a feeling that it was really a negative day. That’s because we exploded to the upside on Chicago Fed Governor Charles Even’s dovish comments on CNBC this morning, and doubled that gain when the ISM Manufacturing Index came in better than expected. But by the afternoon, stocks began to lose ground (coincidently that is just about the time Dr. Bernanke was giving a speech) and at the close we had turned a 150 point gain into a much smaller 77 point gain (the NASDAQ was actually down for the day).
The final tally showed the Dow Jones Industrial Average gaining 77 points to finish the day at 13,515. The S&P 500 was up 3 points to close a 1444. Gold was up $3 to trade at $1777 per ounce, while oil was up a modest $.12 to trade at $92.31.
We have a lot of economic news to ponder this week in addition to today’s ISM number, not the least of which is the non-farm payroll number that comes on Friday. Then, of course beginning next week we will start getting earnings reports from corporate America. The question always is not so much what the earnings will be, but the reaction of shares prices to the reports. Have expectations been lowered enough? We will see over the next few weeks.
Have a nice evening everyone.
