Stock Market Hunkers Down

By: PhilStockWorld

Courtesy of Doug Short. This morning’s release of July Consumer Confidence surprised to the upside, a finding the rather conflicts with the latest Gallup survey of Economic Confidence. But in the real world, the key headlines were about the announcement of sanctions against Russia. The S&P 500 made a shallow arc higher in the morning, hitting its intraday high shortly after the Consumer Confidence report was released. It then sold off in a couple of waves to close at its -0.45% intraday low.

The hunkering down in today’s US market is probably the result of more than the Russian sanction. There’s no doubt a bit of nervousness prior to tomorrow’s peak at Q2 GDP, not to mention the annual revisions for the past three years (in addition to some additional tweaking back to 1999). Will we see confirmation of the mainstream view that the Q1 contraction in GDP was a winter-weather fluke?

And tomorrow we also get the text of the most recent FOMC meeting. Stay tuned!

The yield on the 10-year note ended the day at 2.47%, down 3 bps from the previous close. It is now 3 bps above its interim closing low of May 28th.

Here is a 15-minute chart of the past five sessions. The S&P 500 is up 6.58% year-to-date.

Volume rose today, no doubt triggered by some increased anxiety over the Europe and tomorrow’s GDP.

For a longer-term perspective, here is a pair of charts based on daily closes starting with the all-time high prior to the Great Recession.

- Phil

www.philstockworld.com

Philip R. Davis is a founder of Phil's Stock World (www.philstockworld.com), a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders. Mr. Davis is a serial entrepreneur, having founded software company Accu-Title, a real estate title insurance software solution, and is also the President of the Delphi Consulting Corp., an M&A consulting firm that helps large and small companies obtain funding and close deals. He was also the founder of Accu-Search, a property data corporation that was sold to DataTrace in 2004 and Personality Plus, a precursor to eHarmony.com. Phil was a former editor of a UMass/Amherst humor magazine and it shows in his writing -- which is filled with colorful commentary along with very specific ideas on stock option purchases (Phil rarely holds actual stocks). Visit: Phil's Stock World (www.philstockworld.com)

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