The Market with Ozzy
Market Statistics, News, Sectors of S&P 500, Fixed Income, Economic Calendar and more…Archive for Update II
At the Opening Bell
All the sectors of S&P 500 are in red except Consumer staples, up 0.13%. The weakness from the prior session was carried over into today’s opening bell. S&P started the day with a 5 point loss at 939.31.
Commodities are all on heavy pressure. Gold ($937.85 an ounce) and silver ($14.83 an ounce) are trading with losses, down 1.69% and 3.7% respectively. Crude oil is also in red. It is last quoted at $71.59 a barrel.
At this hour of trading European bourses are trying new lows of the day. FTSE is down 0.45% at 4442.01, DAX down 0.92% at 5060.26, and CAC is down 0.19% at 3328.61.
Strength in the Market
The strength in the financial market continues. S&P is finding new highs for the day under the financials lead. The sector is roughly up, 2.7%. Energy has also made a come back. It was the worst performing sector yesterday. It is now at 52.20, up 1.6%.
Productivity costs numbers came better than expected. Non farm productivity and unit labor costs are both up, 1.6% and 3% respectively. Jobless claims numbers were not as good as the expectations though. It came to 621K, 1K more claims than expected.
Meanwhile, U.S. Dollar is trying come out from its 6-month lows. The Index is now at 79.22, down a quarter. Gold is on its way back to the $1000 an ounce level. It is $0.20 shy from $980 an ounce. Silver changing hands at $15.72. Platinum is at its 6-month high now finding buyers at $1273. It is half the price from its December 2007 record highs which was changing hands at $2252. Goldman Sachs raise its year-end oil price from $65 a barrel to $85 a barrel. The news helped boost the oil prices, up 2.5% to 67.80 a barrel.
All the Indexes are in green now, holding up their fresh gains. Goldman was upgraded by research analyst Bernstein today from market-perform to outperform. According to Hintz, “Fixed-income recoveries have been a boon for the large fixed-income houses of Wall Street, as large cyclical bets provide significant revenue opportunities,”.
He also added that, ” Morgan Stanley (MS) and Goldman will both benefit from the rally, but Goldman stands to be “the ultimate winner during a [fixed-income, currency and commodities] recovery.”
Not all were upgraded today by analysts. Avis Budget(CAR) was downgraded by UBS to sell from neutral.
Short Covering!
S&P 500 finished the day with a loss of 1.37% at 931.76. There was a buying effort in the last 20 minutes of the trading. S&P was oversold earlier today. One might suggest that this was an effort to cover short positions and take profit.
All the eyes now turned to the chain store sales tomorrow. It will be released at noon. But before that, at 8.30am, comes the jobless claims. Market is very sensitive to this report lately. Jobless claims shows the number of individuals who filed for unemployment insurance for the very first time.
Also coming tomorrow is the 10-year note announcement at 11am.
All News
S&P today kept its strong sell rating for Williams& Sonoma (WSM). Even though company has plans to get more market share, still home furnishings sector is quite weak.
Gold futures are now down $5.70 to $977.50 an ounce.
S&P is testing the day lows at this hour in the stock exchange. Sellers mostly concentrated on the materials and energy stocks. It seems like S&P sees some support at 925.67. It is a shabby trading day. S&P is now oversold which is currently at 26.22%, below the critical value of 30.
Dollar made a strong rebound, up 1.25% to 79.46. Oil, on the other hand is under some selling pressure. It is now at $65.51 a barrel, down 4.4%. There are several speculations for this. One is that U.S. crude-oil inventories unexpectedly grew by 3 million barrels. The consensus was for a modest decline. Another reason is that the demand for oil slid, 7.7% lower than the same last year.
Factory orders, which was announced at 10am, was up, however, the service sector such as retailers and health care, slowed down which was reflected in today’s sell-off.
The 10-year Note is up 19 ticks, yield down to 3.54%.
Money Flow
WSJ Market Data Group announced the Money Flow table for major stocks. The figures here show the dollar value of uptick trades minus the downtick trades.
Citigroup and SunTrust Bank are the biggest issue gainers, 34.8 million and 21.3 million respectively. On the other hand, JP Morgan Chase is on top of the dirt pile with a big decline of 106.4 million.
S&P 500 remains higher, trading at 946.61.
Opening Bell
With the opening bell, stocks are trading in a mixed fashion. S&P 500 just manged to touch the green, now trading at 943.39.
American Express Co. (AXP) is now being upgraded by S&P from sell to hold. According to the analyst, AXP is offering a $500 million equity offering to pay back TARP capital. Stock is now trading at 24.90, down 4.35%.
U.S Dollar is also under pressure today. The index is down 0.38% to 78.78.
Meanwhile Citigroup (C) is under heavy fire from the short-sellers. The short float is over 23% at 1.3 billion shares. As you know, these shorts, at some point, need to be covered. Therefore, it will cause a big demand for the C shares pulling the stock higher.
Opening Bell
With the opening bell, stocks rallied to their highs of the day. Energy and Industrials are the leading sectors of S&P 500, up 2.81% and 2.62% respectively. S&P is up 16.46 points at 935.60. All sectors of S&P are trading higher.
Meanwhile the U.S Dollar is hitting its fresh lows for the day. The Index is now at 78.83. As you know, the Index is now trading its six month lows. Crude oil on the other hand, is making a come back, changing hands around $68 a barrel.
Commodities are also on the move today. Gold is trading $982.20 an ounce, up 0.27% where Silver is at 15.77 slightly down 0.13%.
On one note, investors are slowly dumping GM, bringing down the stock as low as $0.27 today. It is now trading at $0.63. It is unfortunate to see GM’s market cap being shrunk to 365.48 million.
According to CNN, General Motors, (GM) and Citigroup, (C) will be replaced in Dow Jones Industrial Average by Cisco (CSCO) and Travelers Co. (TRV), respectively.
Now comes the ISM Manufacturing Index for May. The number came in line with the expectations, still lower than 50, at 42.8. However, this number is much better than the previous April reading of 40.1.
Surprisingly, construction spending had an 0.8% increase which was much better than the consensus. The March reading was 0.4% increase.
Futures vs Fair Value
S&P futures vs fair value: up 14.60%. Investors Friday were eager to get in the market in the last minutes before the closing bell. Just like now, the pre-market activity also suggests positive outlook for the day. The decision of GM’s reorganization and possibility of Chrysler’s coming out out of it were received as good news among investors. Also, European Bourses reacted the PMI data favorably.
In this weeks calendar there are number of market movers, two of which is due today. At 8.30AM we have Personal income and outlays followed by the ISM Mfg Index at 10 AM. The Employment situation is due at 8.30 AM on Friday.
Meanwhile, the Personal income data just came out. The numbers beat the consensus. The consensus suggested a negative growth by 0.2%, however personal income increased during April by 0.5%. It beat not only the consensus but also the March’s 0.2% decrease. With this great news, S&P futures added another two points, now up 16.6%. On the other hand, personal spending decreased by 0.1% which is better than the 0.2% that was widely expected.
Now the eyes turned to the ISM Mfg Index, which is a monthly survey of purchasing managers , that takes place in 50 states covering over 300 manufacturing firms.
1st Quarter 2009 GDP
Real gross domestic product, goods and services produced in the US, decreased at an annual rate of 5.7% in the first quarter of 2009. In the fourth quarter of 2008, the decrease was 6.3%. The contraction of the imports and upturn in personal consumption expenditures, PCE, were the main cause for the improvement in the GDP.
The market had a mixed reaction to the news in the first 30 minutes after the opening bell. Even though stocks are trading in a mixed fashion, all the indices are up. Energy and Materials, for the third consecutive day, are the leading sectors of S&P 500, up 2.13% and 1.55% respectively.
The U.S. Dollar Index is showing weakness today, down 1.32% at 79.46. Crude oil futures started the day with fresh highs for the fifth consecutive day, ascending to the six month high, trading right above $66 a barrel.
OPEC on Thursday kept its production levels unchanged.
Precious metals are also making their way to their fresh highs. Gold is at $975.50 per ounce. Silver also is trading higher, quoted at $15.57 per ounce.
Keefe Bruyette brokerage firm today upgraded Morgan Stanley, MS, from market perform to outperform. The MS shares are trading higher 2.41% at $30.14.
New Home Sales
New Home Sales numbers came almost in-line with expectations. In April, it came in at an annualized rate of 352,000 which was better than the March sales of 351,000. S&P slid to 888.78. Now the stocks are trading in a mixed fashion although S&P is showing some support at 888 level.
