TSP Talk Blog

Stocks opened sharply higher on Thursday following some big earnings reports from Apple and Facebook after the bell on Wednesday, but it wasn't as easy as the final gains would indicate. You can see all of the green on the Dow, Nasdaq and S&P 500 charts below, but after gapping up at the open, the S&P 500 peaked and rolled over and never made it any further, and in the case of the Nasdaq and the Russell 2000 small caps, they closed with gains of less than half of the opening highs, so it ...

A late push lower sent the major stock indices to slight to modest losses after the Fed's release of their policy statement sent them to new highs earlier in the day. The Dow ended the day down 165-points, or 0.48%, which was the worst of the bunch, while the S&P (C-fund) and small caps (S-fund) were down just slightly.

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Stocks were mixed but mostly flat on Tuesday with the Nasdaq lagging with a modest loss. The Dow was up 3-points and the S&P was down less than 1. Bonds were down after a rally in yields, and that may have been the catalyst for the losses in the Nasdaq as well. We got some big earnings reports after the bell so rear-view mirror analysis on a flat day may be futile.

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Stocks were mostly higher on Monday although the Dow did suffer a 62-point loss. There was an odd spike lower at about 3:00 PM ET and I really didn't hear what caused it. It could have been a shake out to get weaker bulls to sell, similar to what may have happened last week with bitcoin, which bounced back big today, but that's just speculation. Basically a nice day for stocks as we jump into this big earnings week. Oh, and we saw new closing highs for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq.
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Stocks opened higher on Friday, and were off to the races after Thursday's emotional tax hike headline sell off. The Dow gained 228-points and the buying was pretty broad across all indices. Small caps led, bonds were down slightly, and the I-fund lagged for some reason, and it wasn't the dollar, which was down and usually helps the I-fund. Perhaps Monday's price will be more favorable.

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