Well it was a pretty dull day ahead of the CPI data.
There was a Fed survey that indicated that banks were tightening their lending standards which spooked builders and the financials and President Bush rolled out his energy policy, which spooked everyone who thought there was going to be a plan to actually accomplish something this decade. I almost fell off my chair when the President said "Over the past six years, my administration has provided more than $12 billion for research into alternative sources of energy." Wow, $2Bn a year?
Maybe it’s just me but didn’t he just ask for $102Bn this year over and above the $612Bn annual military budget in order to protect our oil interests? So it costs about $714Bn a year to make sure we have enough oil to keep wasting while we spend just $2Bn a year to find a way to stop depending on oil. Thank goodness Mr. Bush isn’t in charge of the war on drugs or that would never end either. What? Oh, never mind…
Another man with a plan is Rupert Murdoch, who wrote a letter to the Bancroft family assuring them that no one could better safeguard the integrity of the Wall Street Journal than the man who gave us these fine headlines:
Like Mr. Murdoch, Mr. Bush promised to do absolutely nothing until 2008 but the oil markets were not relived and still finished below $62.50. Once again the front month contract was manipulated for your viewing pleasure as it held + .09 for the day while July dropped .23, August -.25 and longer months dropping between 30 and 46 cents on a slow NYMEX day. The June barrel count stands at 193M with 5 trading days left while July is already bulging with 329M barrels on order.
Our markets zigged and zagged and ended up nowhere in some very unimpressive trading but we had a lot of fun with some quick (and profitable) plays on ATI, JBX and MEE while we waited for the market to pick a direction:
|
|
|
Day’s |
Must |
Comfort |
Break |
Next |
|
Index |
Current |
Move |
Hold |
Zone |
Out |
Goal |
| Dow | 13,346 | 20 | 12,468 | 12,600 | 13,000 | 13,500 |
| Transports | 2,867 | -21 | 2,825 | 2,900 | 3,000 | 3,250 |
| S&P | 1,503 | -2 | 1,430 | 1,460 | 1,500 | 1,550 |
| NYSE | 9,765 | -21 | 9,218 | 9,465 | 9,600 | 10,000 |
| Nasdaq | 2,546 | -15 | 2,454 | 2,500 | 2,600 | 2,750 |
| SOX | 504 | -1 | 477 | 490 | 500 | 560 |
| Russell | 822 | -7 | 803 | 820 | 850 | 900 |
The Transports are still giving us problems and are unlikely to perk up unless oil gives them a break but it’s still the S&P we need to really be concerned about. Tomorrow is a big day with CPI and WMT earnings and we tightened up our protective puts just in case people don’t fall for the old "ex food and energy" gag one more time.
The dollar was flat at 82 and gold was flat at $670 – quite a theme day on the whole!
