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Daily Market Update – February 2, 2016 (7:30 AM) Yesterday was a pretty nice day on a couple of levels. Making a trade of any sort was not among those levels, though. What was nice was that there was actually a small gain on the day and that represented a nice comeback from a sharp decline early in the trading. What was especially good, however, is that while oil prices were plunging yet again, they didn’t take the market along for the ride. Even that early decline in the indexes wasn’t anywhere near where it could have been, given oil’s descent and the way the market had been reacting to those kind of declines for the past few months. So I did get at least one day of the stability that I had been hoping for, but there’s still not enough to really have much in the way of confidence when it comes to putting new money on the line. This morning the futures are again weak and there may not be much in the way of direction until Friday’s Employment Situation Report is released. Based on last week’s reaction to the weak GDP, there’s reason to believe that the market would be happy with weak Employment numbers maybe in the hope that then the FOMC wouldn’t go ahead and increase the interest rate any time soon. Ultimately, that can’t be a recipe for success going forward, but it may be all that the market can really hope for, as earnings by Facebook and Google aren’t going to make up for weak earnings numbers coming from just about everything else. Right now, there isn’t really a single sector of the market that is performing well or can inspire any kind of confidence. No matter how good Facebook and Google may be, they just don’t reflect anything in the economy, at all. This morning’s early futures performance is likely to lead to yet another day of just watching and waiting for some kind of a sign that a bottom is developing and maybe then being prepared to dip a toe. . . |
