Sunday, October 14, 2007
Strong Retail Lifts the Markets
Stocks saw gains Friday on positive economic news and merger activity. The Dow ended the session with a gain of 77.96 points to close at 14,093.08. The SPX added 7.39 points to close at 1,561.80. We are in the green and would still obviously like to see some down movement in the next few days!!
Retail sales data was much stronger than anticipated in September, which helped provide a boost for stocks. Retail sales rose 0.6 percent, double expectations, with the core rate up 0.4 percent. Some of the gains during the month had to do with rising gasoline prices, but even so, sales were better than expected, especially following yesterday’s disappointing same-store sales data.
Consumer spending continues to perform well despite high energy prices and a difficult credit market. At least inflation is apprently not a problem right now with the producer price index core rate up just 0.1 percent. The headline figure did rise 1.1 percent, once again due to energy prices but obviously we live in a world with no oil or food which is why we only look at the core rate!!
The week coming ahead will see a lot of earnings releases. Lets hope for some bad ones Monday and Tuesday. We also have the CPI numbers on Wednesday. Its going to be another interesting week!
Until next time.
Retail sales data was much stronger than anticipated in September, which helped provide a boost for stocks. Retail sales rose 0.6 percent, double expectations, with the core rate up 0.4 percent. Some of the gains during the month had to do with rising gasoline prices, but even so, sales were better than expected, especially following yesterday’s disappointing same-store sales data.
Consumer spending continues to perform well despite high energy prices and a difficult credit market. At least inflation is apprently not a problem right now with the producer price index core rate up just 0.1 percent. The headline figure did rise 1.1 percent, once again due to energy prices but obviously we live in a world with no oil or food which is why we only look at the core rate!!
The week coming ahead will see a lot of earnings releases. Lets hope for some bad ones Monday and Tuesday. We also have the CPI numbers on Wednesday. Its going to be another interesting week!
Until next time.
# posted by Paul @ 4:25 PM 
