Daily Market Reports | Nov 13 2009
By Greg Peel
The Dow fell 96 points or 0.9% while the S&P fell 1.1% to 1087 – failing to consolidate a new high – and the Nasdaq dropped 0.9%.
It’s been a great party, but the numbers have thinned and the host is looking tired so maybe it would be polite not to overstay one’s welcome any longer. After a couple of days of smallish, unconvincing rallies, Wall Street decided last night that if you can’t find a reason to buy it you might as well sell it. The newswires attempted this morning to come up with a specific catalyst, but realistically a lack of any catalyst was enough.
The US Treasury released details of its monthly fiscal budget deficit last night. No need to relive the gory details but Secretary Geithner was quick to suggest the government would need to borrow “substantially less” than assumed at the peak of the GFC in order to repair America’s broken financial system. Stand by for next month’s record Treasury note auction. Geithner’s words were thus positive for the US dollar, which does not look at present like dropping through 75 in its index, most likely due to official intervention across the globe. Comments were made at a meeting of APEC finance ministers that Asia-Pacific needs a strong dollar. Ask and ye shall receive.
The greenback rallied 0.7% on its index last night to 75.63. Gold thus fell US$11.70 to US$1104.70/oz and the Aussie dropped about 0.7 of a cent to US$0.9215.
The EU declared last night that monthly industrial production rose 0.3% against a 0.5% expectation. The weekly US jobless claims numbers came out as per schedule, and showed new claims fell by 12,000 instead of the 2,000 expectation. But after last week’s 10.2% unemployment result, Wall Street is finally starting to realise trading on the back of a volatile weekly statistic will simply make you old before your time.
After a most pathetic losing streak, oil analysts actually got the direction of weekly inventories right this week. Okay, so they said a one million barrel increase and it was actually 1.8 million, but after being in the wrong direction for about ten weeks in a row there would have been lots of backslapping down at the local last night. It’s hard to decide which weekly number is the more meaningless – jobless claims or oil inventories. Oil fell US$2.34 to US$76.94/bbl.
And on the subject of getting things wrong, the world’s biggest employer posted its profit result last night and beat expectations. But the reality was that Wal-Mart’s same store sales were still down for the month, and as the third quarter earnings season draws to a close, Wall Street is left to reflect on whether beating analyst expectations with nominally poor numbers in most cases is really that exciting after all.
Someone nudged the metal traders awake on in London last night, and most fell around 1% except for nickel which was down 4%.
The SPI Overnight fell 33 points or 0.7%.
Next week will be a big week of US economic data releases. Clearly Wall Street is happy not to correct in meaningful fashion at present, but it will take some pretty interesting numbers to spark another decent rally, one feels.
A quick hello to all paraskevidekatriaphobians.
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