It was another quiet day in the markets with both the Dow and S&P 500 up fractionally. The Dow Transports hit another all-time high today. This is a strong signal the market thinks growth will remain strong. Banks bounced back after selling was seen in the space for the past few days. There was early selling today, similar to the past few days and buyers came in throughout the course of the day.
Stronger than expected retail sales numbers were released this morning. Consumers spent more than expected in December. There are similar patterns developing in business capital spending also.
Commodities were mostly higher, with precious metals, grains, copper and natural gas all trading ahead of the tape. Crude oil traded lower on the day. Gold closed just off its highs and closed 0.67% higher and silver traded more than 1% higher.
Buyers came back into banks today. Much of the selling over the past few days was done by hedge funds and other fast money traders. Mutual fund buying in the space returned today.
Transport strength came from truckers and the railroads. The rails were the leader on the day as both short haul rails and the bellwethers both traded higher.
In technology Facebook’s planned announcement turned out to be better news for Yahoo and Google than for Facebook. They announced they were introducing a search product. The search though would be within Facebook, not the entire Internet, and not be a threat to Yahoo and Google’s search offerings.
Source: PFS Group
