Courtesy of Blain.
Last call for the the market recap rating; thanks for the bevy of responses – we plan on only doing this twice a year go forward.
A relatively sleepy session Friday with a quiet open, a bout of selling around 2 PM and then some buyers showing up at the close of the day to limit losses. The S&P 500 fell 0.10% and the NASDAQ 0.16%. Industrial production fell a more-than-expected 0.6% in March. Capacity utilization also declined to 74.8%, the lowest level since August 2010.
“Overall it’s a pretty soggy environment for the market as the week wraps up here,” said David Kelly, chief global strategist at JPMorgan Funds. “We got some good Empire manufacturing numbers but the industrial production is pretty crummy.” We’re in “something of a vacuum,” he said. “There’s no real news. The economy is really struggling here but there’s nothing alarming.”
Kate Warne, an investment strategist at Edward Jones, cautioned against reading too much into the Friday decline, saying next week’s earnings reports and the outcome of the Doha, Qatar, meeting of oil producers would likely determine the future tone of markets. “This is really a wait-and-see market rather than one where investors have a clear sense of the direction going forward,” Warne said.
Not much to add to yesterday’s view of the indexes.
The NYSE McClellan Oscillator remains positive and in good standing.
Yucky little reversal in Apple (AAPL) today but it is still clinging onto the 200 day moving average.
Apple closed 2% lower following a Nikkei report the iPhone maker will continue reduced production of the device from April to June in light of sluggish sales, according to a parts supplier notified of the plan.
Like a bunch of banks earlier this week Citigroup (C) posted “meh” results that “beat expectations”. However, unlike those banks we did not see a big rally in shares today because they had already rallied on the back of those other banks’ reports.
“The financials (have) been the real story of the week, significant moves off the lows,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Wunderlich Securities.
Here is a fly by of some of this week’s best performers! A lot of action this week outside of financials was in energy, mining, and Chinese companies:
See you back here Monday as we are about to enter the heaviest portion of earnings season.
