Promises, Promises: Markets Push Higher On Dr. Bernanke

Dr. Bernanke tells Congress he’s ready to act and markets push higher

We’ve all seen this before. Dr. Bernanke and the Federal Reserve say they’re going to do more and markets climb on the hopes of more quantitative easing. Today was a repeat performance of yesterday as Dr. Bernanke returned to Capitol Hill and major U.S. stock indexes marched higher.

Of course, little noticed in the hopes for even easier monetary policy, Dr. Bernanke said that job growth was going to remain slow, Europe was a big risk and LIBOR could be a “big deal.”

The major U.S. stock indexes rose with the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) climbing 0.7%, the Russell 2000 (NYSEARCA:IWM) adding 0.7%, the Nasdaq 100 (NYSEARCA:QQQ) jumping 1.3% in the most powerful performance of the day, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) came in second with a gain of 0.8%. Intel, Microsoft, Cisco and Hewlett Packard were all strong performers.

On the down side, financials were clobbered with the Financial Sector Select SPDR ETF (NYSEARCA:XLF) dropping 0.5% as Bank of America dropped over 4% and BlackRock, Citigroup, JP Morgan and Wells Fargo all posted declines.

Gold (NYSEARCA:GLD) fell 0.5% while oil (NYSEARCA:USO) gained 0.9% as oil reached $89.87/bbl.

Natural Gas (NYSEARCA:UNG) jumped 6.5% on views that supplies are dwindling while gasoline (NYSEARCA:UGA) climbed to $2.74/gal.

The drought continued in the Midwest, sending soybeans to new highs last seen in 2008.

Bottom line: It was “risk on” kind of day as markets turned yet again to Dr. Bernanke for promises of more help and economic reports were mixed.

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