Friends
Stocks continued their upward surge as another late summer week of trading has gotten off to a good start. The bulls seemed determined to take a shot at 2000 on the S&P 500 and we did briefly trade above that level. Despite not being able to hold 2000, the bulls still seem to have taken the fight out of the bears.
By the close, the Dow Jones was up 75 points to finish the day at 17,076. The S&P 500 was up 9 points to close at 1997. Gold was down $2 to trade at $1277 per ounce, while oil was down $.26 to trade at $93.39 per barrel WTI. Yes, it is vacation season on Wall Street and volume is very low, but no one ever had to give back a gain because it was made on light volume.
On the economic front the news was actually a bit disappointing today. New Home Sales came in a bit light as did the PMI Non-Manufacturing Index. Tomorrow we get the Case Shiller Home Price Index and the FHFA House Price Index, plus consumer and investor confidence numbers and Durable Goods Orders. On Thursday we get the revised 2nd quarter GDP number along with the weekly jobless claims number. On Friday we get Personal Income and Outlays and Chicago PMI. That’s a lot of economic data for traders to chew on. Let’s see if the bulls can rally us into Labor Day.
Have a nice evening everyone.