Daily Market Reports | Feb 03 2012
By Greg Peel
The Dow fell 9 points or 0.1% while the S&P rose 0.1% to 1325 and the Nasdaq rose 0.4%.
What a rollercoaster ride. The Dow was up as much as 40 from the bell last night and down as much as 25. Scary stuff.
One has to keep reminding oneself that the volatility we saw on Wall Street in the period 2007-11, in which a double-digit-only move in the Dow was the rarity and triple digits the norm, represented an unusual period in history. Prior to 2007 if the Dow rose or fell 50 points it would be considered a wild session. Right at the moment the volume on Wall Street (and on Bond Street) can only be described as pathetic and while low volume can often invoke volatility, in this case the few players in the market seem fairly evenly distributed between buyers and sellers and thus we have a bit of a stalemate.
To a large extent the stalemate reflects what's going on in Greece, or more more accurately, what's not going on in Greece. We're constantly told there'll be an agreement reached in Athens “soon” and the global market seems to have assumed a Greek resolution to be a given at some stage. It's just that no one wants to take too much of a punt beforehand.
There was a little bit of a flurry last night when Chinese premier Wen Jiabao suggested in Beijing, where he is hosting Angela Merkel, that China was sizing up ways it could be involved in the European Stability Mechanism which is due to be established next year. In other words, “we're just jangling them round a bit now in our hand before figuring out how best to give them a squeeze”. The excitement was short lived as the market realised we're talking a year away.
Then there's the US earnings results, which continue to be mixed at best. Last night Dow component Merck disappointed but Mastercard surprised to the upside and Qualcomm became the latest tech company to blow forecasts out of the water. There's little in the way of a trend. US economic data are also mostly positive but mixed. Last night's monthly chain store sales data showed discount stores like Target and Costco going well and any middle-range retailer struggling badly. The unseasonably warm US winter has absolutely killed apparel stores just as surely as bikinis have been impossible to shift in Sydney this summer. But the weekly new jobless claims number fell to 367,000 last week which is almost a four year low.
Tonight it's non-farm payrolls, and Wall Street often goes quiet ahead of what is realistically the most important data set. Consensus has 150,000 jobs being added for a steady unemployment rate of 8.5%.
Currency markets were quiet last night as the US dollar ticked up a tad to 79.00. The Aussie was of the most interest after the surprise jump in the local trade surplus announced yesterday, but it has only gained 0.3% to US$1.0740 over 24 hours. Gold strangely rose US$14.10 to US$1759.00/oz with the only explanation being creeping concern as the Greek deal never quite happens. Having risen on Wednesday night, base metals decided to fall last night by 1-2% on lack of interest.
Is someone putting on a big crude oil spread trade again? Last night Brent rose US$1.14 to US$112.44/bbl and West Texas fell US95c to US$96.66/bbl. The spread has been sitting around the US$10-11 mark for a few weeks now having been to US$26 before Libya came back on line, but now it's edged out to around US$16. Brent is under the influence of the ramifications of European sanctions against Iran which would also be having an impact in the US if it wasn't for larger than expected local inventories.
So not much more to say today. Next week the US earnings season will start to taper off as the Aussie season starts to ramp up to give us a bit more to concentrate on locally. In the meantime we may or may not ever hear some news from Athens.
The SPI Overnight was down a point.
US jobs numbers tonight along with global service sector PMIs. Rudi will appear on the BRR Network's Round Table at 3pm today.
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