Friends
It was quite an eventful day in the markets. First of all, on the domestic economic front, the first look at 3rd quarter GDP indicated that the economy grew at 2.8%, which seems to be better than expected (of course there will be a couple of adjustments to this number in coming months). Also the weekly jobless claims number continues to get slightly better over time. The big economic surprise came when the European Central Bank lowered rates by .25%. This was unexpected and sent the Euro downward and European stocks followed. I guess ECB President Draghi can move the goal posts just as Dr. Bernanke can.
As for the markets, the Twitter IPO was very successful as the NYSE did not have the same problems that NASDAQ had during the Facebook IPO. As for the rest of the market, the surprise move by the ECB seemed to shake traders and for the day the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 152 points to close at 15,593. The S&P 500 was down 23 points to finish the day at 1747. Gold was down $11 to trade at $1306 per ounce, while oil was down $.53 to trade at $94.27 per barrel WTI.
I thought tomorrow was going to be the big day for economic news. We sure didn’t see the move by the ECB coming. Looks like their central bank, just like our central bank, doesn’t have a lot of faith in the recovery that has been going on. The Fed panicked by not tapering and today Draghi seemed to panic also. Who cares about politicians, Central Bankers seem to be in control, for better or worse. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.
Have a nice evening everyone.
