Friday, October 16, 2015

Economic Journal - Friday, 10/16/2015

(As of 7:10 am PST)

Today marks the end of a week that saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average snap a 7 day win streak with a mid-week selloff followed by a rally that brought the major indices to their highest levels since August. This back and forth trend makes it difficult to predict how the week will end especially since there isn’t much fundamental ground for any of these movements to stand on. The prevailing thought that continues to drive this upward trend is the sentiment that the Fed won’t raise interest rates before the end of the year. But as we have said before, the premise of this decision is built on bad economic data. Third quarter earnings reports are for the most part supporting the bad economic news theme. Companies like Mattel, WD-40 Company, W.W. Grainger and Kansas City Southern all missed their estimates while Wynn Resorts, General Electric, Honeywell and Schlumberger were all in-line or topped estimates. The one thing all of these companies managed to have in common is that not one of them reported a year-over-year increase in revenue. It’s a light reporting day with reports on industrial production and job openings due out later today. Oil prices are up today following a down day yesterday based on news that there was a large addition to U.S. crude stockpiles last week which is a sign that the global oversupply of crude isn’t going away. Gold is down slightly in early trading.

No comments: