Once again, the energy sector is helping to prop up the US market. Telecom and financials sustained the most selling and real estate participated most in temporary gains but pulled back into the close.
As you probably know, the US president tweeted antagonistically vis Russia this AM about an impending strike on Syrian armed forces. This was followed by a tweet about how we should get along with Russia. And finally, he tweeted that our current problems with Russia are caused by the Russia investigation.
The Speaker of the House just added to the expanding list of Republicans who will not run for reelection. More national security staff at the White House are being relieved of duty. Meanwhile, some fear military leaders are being drawn reluctantly to the edges of the integrity vacuum at the top. Official press releases inform that intelligence is still being gathered on the Syrian chemical weapons strike. This might strain the imagination and patience of individuals who understand our capacity for real-time surveillance and tracking of such events. Reports from the region confirm the common sense estimation that Syrian armed forces have been diverting equipment and personnel as Britain, France, the US and others are seen moving battle group assets around the region.
March headline CPI less than expected at -0.1% and Core CPI as expected at +0.2%.
Gap between 2 and 10 year yields narrows to levels not seen since fall 2007.
FOMC minutes were released at 14:00 ET and there was no immediate reaction.
I guess you have noticed the price of gold. GCM8 was dealing with a resistance a key resistance point but has pulled back substantially from those highs to 1355.70 or +73% . The USD Index has for its part retraced much of its intraday losses and now sits at 89.519 and -.08%. This does not account entirely for this fickle action in the precious metal and gold bugs are justifiably excited given the geopolitical situation.
SPX/ES/SPY: 2642.19/2643.00/263.71 ES 2630 area held overnight as price moved into Tuesday's thin lower spike. After an early session confrontation with the declining 20 day sma SPX bobbed around trying to get back to yesterday's close and eventually fell back to near the opening price of 2643.89.
Market Internals Advance-Decline Lines:+47.00. NYSE Breadth: -1.07:1, NASDAQ Breadth: -1.28:1. NYSE TICK: Cumulative TICK had a positive but flat trending day. TRIN: 1.10
NYSE MOC: -27M on balance. NYSE composite volume 727472.
Please note that in yesterday's update, S&P composite volume was mistakenly listed in place of NYSE composite volume. The actual number was 886231
Debt/Bond/Treasury ZNM8 had been up significantly intraday on risk mentality but pulled back to+.12% while the 10 Year Treasury yield dropped slightly to 2.79%
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