Posted on 12/26/2018 10:16:18 AM PST by Red Badger
Stocks rose sharply in volatile trading on Wednesday as surges in retail and energy shares helped Wall Street regain most of the steep losses suffered in the previous session.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average traded 550 points higher as of 12:58 p.m. ET, while the S&P 500 gained 2.6 percent. The Nasdaq Composite outperformed, rising 3.5 percent. The Dow and S&P 500 briefly turned negative earlier in the day.
Retailers were among the best performers on Wednesday, with the SPDR S&P Retail ETF (XRT) jumping 3.5 percent. Shares of Wayfair, Kohl's and Dollar General all rose at more than 5.5 percent. Data released by Mastercard SpendingPulse showed retailers were having their best holiday season in six years. Amazon's stock also jumped 5.5 percent after the company said it sold a record number of items this holiday season.
Energy stocks also jumped as U.S. crude oil prices jumped more than 7 percent. Shares of Marathon Oil and Hess were the best performers within the energy sector, jumping 7.6 percent and 6.9 percent, respectively.
"With the end of the quarter, we could get a bounce in the next few days," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Spartan Capital Securities. But "the problem is [President Donald] Trump continues to create a lot of uncertainty. We can't focus on the fact there are a lot of good bargains out there."
Wednesday's moves come after the worst Christmas Eve sell-off ever on Monday, which sent the S&P 500 into a bear market. The S&P 500 was down 20.06 percent from an intraday record high set on Sept. 21. The broad index is also down 19.78 percent from its record close reached the day before. U.S. exchanges were closed Tuesday for the Christmas holiday.
The plunge in stocks on Monday came after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin held calls with CEOs of major U.S. banks last weekend and issued a statement saying, "The banks all confirmed ample liquidity is available for lending to consumer and business markets."
On Monday, a senior Treasury official, who declined to be named, told CNBC that the purpose of the call and putting out the statement, was a "prudent, preemptive measure" following last week's market volatility, which saw the Dow experiencing its worst one-week plunge in a decade. Yet while the moves were intended to be reassuring, they triggered confusion among market watchers.
"This call was absolutely unnecessary and in terms of their ability to communicate to the markets, they're losing it," Frank Troise, managing director at SoHo Capital, told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Wednesday.
Troise said the Treasury call begs the question of whether Mnuchin has "no idea what he's doing" or if "there actually is a liquidity crisis." If the latter option is the case, he questioned why it didn't come up in the Federal Reserve's recent minutes. "The concern now in the market is actually that Treasury's out of touch with what's going on," he said.
Monday's move lower also came after President Donald Trump commented on the Federal Reserve once more, calling it "the only problem our economy has" in a tweet. Trump also said Tuesday the Fed was "raising interest rates too fast because they think the economy is so good." Trump has been critical of the Fed's decisions regarding monetary policy this year. The central bank has hiked overnight rates four times this year.
This is all taking place amid an ongoing government shutdown that started last week. The Trump administration and congressional leaders are at a stalemate over funding for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. The administration says the wall is important for national security while opponents of the barrier note it will not solve the U.S.' immigration issues.
"Government shutdown starts with no end game strategy by either side," L. Thomas Block, Washington policy strategist at Fundstrat Global Advisors, said in a note to clients. "The President ... remains convinced that fighting for HIS wall is worth a government shutdown and his base loves the confrontation."
—CNBC's John Melloy and Michael Sheetz contributed to this report.
Expiration date on options coming and they are about
to get their shorts burned.
If FED was ruining it, why are this years Holiday retail sales best in 6 years?
Stocks are still over-valued and need to come down another 30% based on averages of past 100 years.
Here's something interesting ...
I am active in several business networking groups including a regional Chamber of Commerce whose members include some of the largest national companies in banking, telecommunications and pharmaceuticals. Most of them are having trouble attracting and retaining members -- because their members are so busy they can't handle the demands on their schedules for networking events.
I have never seen anything like this in my professional career.
I see the strength of the U.S. dollar being a very important driver in the next couple of years. On a monthly basis, the U.S. Dollar Index (DXY) reached a low point of 80 in July 2011. Its highest point was 128 in March 1985. At the end of November 2018 it was at 103.
For those of you who can remember, I'd ask one question: Does it feel more like 1985 or 2011 right now?
Commie rats upset because they can’t trash Trump today..oh well they will think of something else to trash him about..picking his nose..drinking a soda, something
The Feds are trying to ruin it. It's obvious they said > 2% GDP is bad. WHAT MORE EVIDENCE DO YOU NEED?
It goes up, it goes down. Will the doomsday forecasts all be retracted? Will the papers look for traders with big smiles on their silly-a$$ faces?
Will articles appear that praise Trump?
Using the DOW as the sole indicator of the health of the economy is something a small mind might be tempted to do, but there is more to the economy than the ONE number that is broadcast thousands of times daily, the “DOW.”
Why is it, that when it goes down (during a Republican administration) it’s a “plunge,” “free fall,” “a crash.”
The Detroit rag news” says: “... Mr. President. But the stock market drop rests in your lap.” Will it say “The stock market rise rests in your lap”?
The Journal had an interesting article on this today. Apparently one of the things - and possibly the major thing - behind these wild swings is computerized trading, which is automatic and instantaneous. And then, in a sense, it’s reading its own data and acting on that basis so things go from bad to worse (or from high to too high, depending).
I think this is a serious problem, and I also think it’s vulnerable to hacking in a big way. Heck, one of the Vegas casinos got hacked by the Chinese through its huge fish tank, which had a security system to watch for changes in water temperature that unfortunately was not very secure itself. The Chinese are the biggest offenders in this, and you better believe that they’d like to destroy our economy.
What a steaming pile of Bushie-like politics. Holiday consumers spent $1 trillion dollars this season, with those numbers coming in today.
Interest rates should be in line with real inflation rate. Otherwise all it does is create bubbles in hard assets such as housing & stocks, and like every bubble in history, those bubbles always get popped hard and it never ends well. Recall the Housing bubble crashing?
AUTOMATED COMPUTER BUYING AND SELLING SHOULD BE BANNED..................
More bull crap preached to the public by MSM, the coupe administration and the rest of the democrats about the crash of the market and the fall of the Trump presidency. It keeps of getting worst... maybe out of desperation on their part.
Then there are still the anti Trumpers like Corker and Flake talking sour grapes... and the traitors being former and present FBI and an AG office staff attacking Trump.
First, DOW has no direct connection to CURRENT economic activity. DOW is looking ahead, not current situation.
With all this great CURRENT business activity you are seeing, and I believe you 100%, why did the DOW take a hit? Because it saw what is coming in 6-12 months forward as a POSSIBILITY. Such as no more tax cuts to stimulate with speaker Pelosi, world debt at record high which can bite you if economy slows down and world economy is indeed slowing down. That corporate nominal tax rate dropping from 35% to 21% with push from PDJT and significant cuts in regulations is why the DOW kept surging since election. Now there is not many regulations left to cut, and further tax cuts are impossible.
“The Stock Market has Predicted 9 of the Past 5 Recessions” - Paul Samuelson.
Bill Maher Hopes for ‘Crashing Economy’ to Get Rid of Trump — ‘Bring on the Recession’
The data are clear...sitting presidents overseeing economic malaise or recession don't get re-elected.
Now, I'm not going to go all tin foil hat and claim this is all being caused by Soros, the Illuminati, the Masons, the Rockefeller and Rothschild families, and the Trilateral Commission. Quite the contrary: The NYSE and NASDAQ's combined capitalization was $33 TRILLION in April 2018. Nobody in the list I compiled can cause $5 trillion in evaporation just because they want to...indeed, total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 155,000 in November 2018, and the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 3.7 percent. Job gains occurred in health care, in manufacturing, and in transportation and warehousing.
But I DO believe that expectations can beget changes in the real economy. This is why it is important that the Administration get ahead of the nattering nabobs of economic negativism in 2019. Otherwise people may get hurt and Bill Maher may get his wish.
The stock market is not the economy.
The economy is not the stock market.
You mean it’s not the end of the world, with Trump to blame, after all? No worries, though. Neil Cavuto and the rest of the LSM will find a way to negatively report it, and continue on with their desperate attempt to rid themselves of Trump.
They said on the news today that AMAZON did Very Well!~
Told my hubby to pat himself on the back! He ordered so many things from Amazon and other online retailers, like even Target and Academy, they don’t always have big things in the stores.... Like a big wood playhouse kit for our grands! We wouldn’t have any way to get it home! Shipped to our daughter in Weatherford, we are in suburb of Austin. Free Shipping
We didn't need to be afraid ?
We may have learned math, but we're still public school grads.
Prime is awesome. No shipping and you can get such a variety of things.
I forgot (terrible I know) to buy for my nieces’ kids in Virginia. I’m in Az. I bought a beautiful jewelry box my grand niece who is 11 and she promptly put away all her jewelry in it and a set of legos for the grand nephew.
The items were delivered in two days. I could never do that.
Amazon really is amazing.
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