Daily Market Commentary

The choppy action continued on Monday as we saw back and forth swings during the day that culminated with the S&P 500 closing basically flat on the day, the Dow and Nasdaq down slightly, but small caps (S-fund) were beaten down a bit to the tune of 1%. It was mostly a stalemate but there may have been a winner at the end of the day, but it took an outside influence after the bell to declare it.

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After opening in positive territory on Thursday, stocks quickly flipped over and made a steady decline into the end of the day, which was seasonally uncharacteristic on the Thursday before the three day Easter weekend. The Dow lost a modest 113-points, 0.33%, but the broader indices took a more serious hit and the Nasdaq took the brunt of it losing over 2% on the day. Retail sales came in lighter than expected, initial jobless claims were worse than expected, but we did see Consumer Sentiment ...

After a big rally failure on Tuesday, stocks tried again on Wednesday and this time succeeded in holding the gains into the close. But be careful. T'is the time for holiday reversals. We'll talk about that below. The Dow gained 344-points while the small caps, the Nasdaq, and Transportation stocks led on the upside with 2% gains on the day.

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After the pre-market CPI report was released we saw the start of what looked like another Turnaround Tuesday. The problem was the gap up open gave the bears a reason to push the indices back down, to fill that gap, so the turnaround turned back down. The Dow was up 362-points at its high and ended the day down 88-points, which was actually more than 100-point off its low as well. The S&P 500 hit a wall of resistance at its highs before flipping over. Bonds were up as yields came off their ...

Mondays continue to be movers and yesterday it was the bears who did most of the moving. Another rally in bond yields has the market on edge as we head into today's important CPI report and then earnings season. The Dow lost 413-points and it was fairly red across the board, although the recently beaten down Transports were up. Small caps were down but outperformed for a change.

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