Monday, February 05, 2007
Quiet Week?
Friday saw a mixed day for stocks, but last week ended with solid gains for the major market indexes. The Dow ended the session with a loss of 20.199 points to 12,653.49. However, our favourite, the SPX added 2.45 points to 1,448.39.
We are in green but our short 1470 Call has come into focus. As we only have 9 days of trading left it is time to move the stop loss up from 1460 to 1465. This widens our green zone. You all should have received an email about this from me.
The main story Friday was the release of the employment report for January. Nonfarm payrolls rose by 111,000 during the month, but this was about 50,000 short of estimates. However, the prior two months were revised higher by a total of 99,000, so the overall amount of job additions was actually stronger than anticipated. At the same time, average hourly earnings rose less than expected at growth of 0.2 percent.
You might have thought this data would have drived the markets even further higher. However oil prices soared on the session. Crude rose by $1.78 a barrel to close at $59.02 a barrel. For the week, oil was up more than six percent from its lows of $49 a barrel only a few days ago. Forecasts for cold weather in February and expectations for stronger demand combined to push the commodity higher. This extreme rise became a drag as higher oil prices means consumers spend less and leads to higher business and manufacturing costs. Only firms which benefit are energy companies.
This week should hopefully be a lot more quiet after what has been a fairly bumpy first two weeks of the cycle. No significant economic data is being published this week and no major companies reporting this week other than Disney and someone else (can't remember....sorry!!!).
Lets hope that the traders will take some of their profits off the table this week and the SPX has a nice gentle drift downwards.
Lets see.
Until next time.
We are in green but our short 1470 Call has come into focus. As we only have 9 days of trading left it is time to move the stop loss up from 1460 to 1465. This widens our green zone. You all should have received an email about this from me.
The main story Friday was the release of the employment report for January. Nonfarm payrolls rose by 111,000 during the month, but this was about 50,000 short of estimates. However, the prior two months were revised higher by a total of 99,000, so the overall amount of job additions was actually stronger than anticipated. At the same time, average hourly earnings rose less than expected at growth of 0.2 percent.
You might have thought this data would have drived the markets even further higher. However oil prices soared on the session. Crude rose by $1.78 a barrel to close at $59.02 a barrel. For the week, oil was up more than six percent from its lows of $49 a barrel only a few days ago. Forecasts for cold weather in February and expectations for stronger demand combined to push the commodity higher. This extreme rise became a drag as higher oil prices means consumers spend less and leads to higher business and manufacturing costs. Only firms which benefit are energy companies.
This week should hopefully be a lot more quiet after what has been a fairly bumpy first two weeks of the cycle. No significant economic data is being published this week and no major companies reporting this week other than Disney and someone else (can't remember....sorry!!!).
Lets hope that the traders will take some of their profits off the table this week and the SPX has a nice gentle drift downwards.
Lets see.
Until next time.
# posted by Paul @ 5:03 AM 
