Note - from June 24th 2009, this blog has migrated from Blogger to a self-hosted version. Click here to go straight there.
You can't blame the US markets for trying to rally - after all, it was Monday, and Monday is Funday. The S&P futures were up 7 points before the umpire held the ball aloft in the centre square... in fact before the umps had checked the players stops in the dressing room. In fact one of the ruckmen was still asleep and the bootstudder had not even picked up the socks (the prize of the day).
By the close, anybody who bought into the pre-market sexual tension was feeling somewhat deflated... the Opening Orgasm - a ritual on Mondays - drove the Dow up 75 points within the first half hour, but by the close the Dowager was shoing a gain of just over 25 points (there's that number 25 again... made famous by Billy Picken).
The Dow finished up 27.31 points (0.23%) at 12,827 and change. The S&P added just over 4.5 points (0.32%) to 1416.2, and the Nasdaq continued its horror run, with the Nasdaq100 dropping 6.08 point (0.31%) to 1957.4 while the Nasdaq Composite dipped 5.19 (0.21%) to 2499.46 points.
Within the Dow, 21 components managed to finish in the green, with the three of the other 9 dropping hard
- Alcoa AA dropped $1.76 (5%) to $33.11 as a result of whispers about its upcoming earnings report;t
- Boeing BA dropped $2.95 (3.44%) to $82.87 as people woke up that airlines are capital-destroyers and people who sell stuff to airlines are in a mug's game;
- Hewlett Packard HPQ dropped $1.52 (3.24%) to $45.35 on a brokerage downgrade and some other stuff which is not worth mentioning.
Volume on the NYSE was 4.2 billion shares, split almost 50-50 between advancers and decliners. The 1874 gainers traded 2.11 billion shares, while the 1473 losers traded 2.06 billion. Nasdaq volume got up to 2.6 billion shares - 1.5 billion to the downside in 1595 declining stocks, while the 1424 advancing stocks traded 1 billion units.
There was no big licks of repo dough sludged into the market's coffers today by the Fed - the only repurchase was a $2.5billion overnight jobbie which only contained 0.65 bill in Treasury-backed collateral. that was no way big enough to do anything constructive for the bulls. Likewise there was no economic news of note (there is none until Thursday, if I recall correctly).
The big move down during the session - a hundred points from the morning high - seemed to be centred around the ludicrous 'Gulf of Tonkin' like incident, in which a US warship claims to have been harassed by Iranian speedboats, who radioed in that they were going to come and blow the warship up. If that's all it takes to put the wind up a US Commander, then they are well and truly finished. I mean, a warship costs tens of billions of dollars to build and run, and if they feel genuinely threatened by speedboats, then whoever built the bloody things ought to give the government its money back.
A cynic might have expected the White House to rephrase (slightly) the ominous radio broadcast to something like...
What Ho, US Ship... Osama Here. I say, I'm ever so keen to make sure that you don't find my Iranian friends' Nuclear Weapons factory, so what say we just blow you up, the way me and 19 high school dropouts did to your control and communications centres in New York on September 11th? By the way, I really hope the Democrats win - Hillary and I want to introduce the hijab to America in 2009... (muffled laughter)
Seriously - is the White House that concerned by the Ron Paul candidacy that they have to have the Zodiac-xis of Evil? threatening a US warship? It's the stuff of comic books.
I have said before that genuine unfettered capitalism would never fund a warship - they are designed exclusively for attacking people during various State efforts to steal resources from them. Commerce does not proceed by trying to steal people's resources, because it is woefully inefficient and you end up bankrupt (but if you're a government contractor in a militarised socialist system, you get the government to do the pillaging on your behalf, the taxpayers pay the bills while you make enough cash to buy Conrad Black's tasteless money pit).
Crude's easily-forecastable nuffie-slaughtering continued apace with the front-month declining another $2.50 to $95.39 (and it got as low as $94.47--- taking out stops for nuffnuff with stops at $94.50), and Gold shed 5 bucks.
The Bond - oddly enough - suck up ten ticks (that's a decent move), but don't fret, it is going to fall apart this week and finish the week below 117.
This 'writing the whole Rant from scratch' is bloody tedious. I must get the RantSheets working tomorrow...
