For a very hot Saturday ... (Plus Q2 graphics)

Sat 6-30-18

For this very hot Saturday -- I've been particularly overwhelmed since we had a power outage today and the house quickly rose to 92 degrees.  Fortunately I do have a very cool subterranean basement, one of the reasons I chose this house, to which I could claim refuge just for blazing hot days like today when the power goes so I have a place to claim for refuge.  The power came back on at 7:20 p.m. and with the AC going full blast I have now lowered the interior temp to a much more comfortable 85 degrees. 

Wall Street ekes out gain as Nike surges

I actually did write this thing up on Friday, I just neglected to post it:

Fri 6-29-18
For the second consecutive session the market has decided to put trade war anxieties aside and focus instead on fundamentals and another day of bargain hunting. And though the Dow was up more than 250 through much of the session and settled later to close up only 55, the quarter news was nothing less than ebullient.  For Q2 the Dow was up almost one percent, the S&P almost 3, the Nasdaq over 6, and the Russell 2000 over 7 percent.  At over 7 billion, volume remains in line with the 4-week average. 

Wall Street advances with help from technology, financials

Thu 6-28-18

Last night I completely lost myself in learning how to use the latest version of Quicken so that I can do a cash flow analysis of the last few years.  Thus I neglected to check on the market and send this report.  I neglected to notice that the Dow had seesawed in a 300 point range before closing 98 points up as, once again, the market found cause to put trade war concerns on the back burner and instead focus on the good news coming out of tech and doing some bargain shopping in the financial sector.  The overall sentiment was that the sell offs of the last few sessions were overdone, largely the result of mixed signals from Washington, and not justified by the fundamentals.  But Amazon hit the pharma sector hard when it entered that arena by buying PillPack.  Amazon rose, brick-and-mortar pharma got blasted.  At just over 7 billion shares traded, volume was close in line with the 4-week average. 

Wall Street tumbles on renewed U.S.-China trade jitters

After zooming up nearly 300 points early in the session, the other shoe dropped.  At first investors were very encouraged when the White House seemed to be taking back the earlier statements about blocking Chinese ownership of U.S. firms, but then later in the day economic adviser Kudlow took to Fox to emphatically clarify that the stance on China had not softened, that the hardline approach has not waned.  The Dow dropped nearly 500 points ending the session 165 down.  Volume was vigorous at 7.7 billion. 

Energy leads Wall St rebound as trade worries ease

All the market needed was some good news outside the trade wars to shoot the Dow back up again and today that came in the form of a strong performance from the consumer discretionary sector reassuring investors that fundamentals are still solid.  GE in fact had its best day in three years.  But the trade war news was helped too with Canada’s announcement that they too would seek tariffs against China.  The war news was also hurt though with Trump threatening to punish Harley-Davidson with higher taxes in retaliation for their move.  The Dow shot up 130 points through most of the session only to lose ground in the last hour and close just 30 points up.  Volume was a little below average at 6.7 billion. 

Wall Street pummeled by escalating trade threats

Today the trade war comes home with Harley-Davidson’s decision to move its European motorcycle production out of the country.  Today investors got the message – “escalation of (rhetoric) on trade is leading to real-world consequences.”  Compounding this was the report that the Treasury Dept would block firms with at least 25 percent Chinese ownership from buying U.S. tech firms.  This combo signaled that the trade war was real and triggered panic selling that brought the Dow down 500 points, though it did recover some of this to close 328 down.  Still, it was quite a blood-letting and on very high volume of 7.7 billion shares.  

Succinct Summations of Week’s Events 6.22.18 (plus "Big Mistakes)

It is time for the weekly summation, the positives being that housing starts from May were revised higher than previously reported and the trade deficit was revised downwards.  The negatives were same old, same old -- trade war anxieties continue to push the market and virtually all indicators in a southerly direction, the Dow losing over 500 points this week.  The bonus this Sunday evening is selected from Barry Ritholtz's Sunday reading list as posted on his Big Picture blog.  This article is a commentary on a new book on investing that's getting a lot of buzz, "Big Mistakes: The Best Investors and Their Worst Investments."  The thesis here is that it is far more constructive and critical to investment success to analyze and understand the failures of our best and brightest rather than to go down the (almost certainly doomed) path of trying to emulate their successes.  Hope everyone had a great weekend.