Well that was just lovely!
All of our indices performed well with 1% gains pretty much across the board.
The S&P is now back above it’s 2/26, pre-drop level and only the SOX was really dragging with a .33% gain. Although we had good earnings from C, I think the news that FMT found someone (looks like FIG) to take all $2.9Bn worth of sub-prime loans off their hands, and the fact that this gave FIG a 5% boost, was a big sigh of relief for both banking (up 2%) and housing (up 1.6%).
Oil was held in check for the day but they’ve dropped the May barrel count all the way down to a manageable 120Mb with June at "just" 308Mb and July at 127Mb allowing traders room for inventory shenanigans that kept us away from making any plays there. The June contract (live on Monday) is holding $65 and has since the 12th, which is more relevant than the daily movement of the May contract at this point. We made the mistake of focusing on the rapidly declining April contract in last month’s closing week so now we will ignore that and focus on our future (even if it is just a month into the future!).
We set some very nice levels today but let’s not get too excited and give it a few days before making upward adjustments:
|
|
|
Day’s |
Break |
50 |
62% |
Break |
|
Index |
Current |
Move |
Down |
DMA |
Fib Level |
Up |
| Dow | 12,720 | 108 | 12,400 | 1,245 | 12,528 | 12,650 |
| Transports | 2,872 | 42 | 2,736 | 2,817 | 2,889 | 2,983 |
| S&P | 1,468 | 15 | 1,410 | 1,426 | 1,427 | 1,460 |
| NYSE | 9,625 | 102 | 9,250 | 9,250 | 9,218 | 9,465 |
| Nasdaq | 2,518 | 20 | 2,400 | 2,440 | 2,454 | 2,500 |
| SOX | 474 | 1 | 470 | 472 | 477 | 490 |
| Russell | 831 | 12 | 790 | 798 | 803 | 820 |
We still need the SOX to give us another green and a little follow through from the Transports (which will be tricky if oil stays up here) but, on the whole, anything other than a reversal tomorrow will keep us on a very good path.
TSO actually did lose a buck today, it’s largest daily loss since 2/27 as ZMan’s logic, that crack spreads can’t continue at 100% over last year’s levels, starts to gain some traction in the marketplace. Most of the oil patch accomplished a mid-day turnaround as crude was pumped up a full $1.20 after testing $62.50 in the morning.
The dollar gapped down to 82 and just stayed there, looking worse for the wear while gold blew through $690 to finish just under $695. It looks like inflation is going to be the new black this year so let’s start thinking about TIPS for our cash and keep our eyes wide open as we take our gains in the markets as they’re going to have to do a lot better than 13,000 to keep up with the price of oil.
