US Indices on Thursday's close: SPX: (+0.45%), NDX: (+0.31%), Dow: (+0.51%) and RUT: (+0.46%)
Industrials, Utilities and Real Estate led a broadly positive tape while Consumer Discretionary was weakly negative. Participants didn't seem overly impressed with the independently released reports from US and China trade officials. A joint statement has yet to materialize. Fed-speak, however, did influence the session positively.
ESH19 finished near the highs of the session and SPX as well as the other three majors are over the 30 day averages as the 20s are starting to flatten out.
Internals on the Close
Breadth went positive in the second half of the session.
NYSE A-D Lines: +649. NYSE breadth: +1.32:1 and NASD breadth: +1.65:1. NYSE cumulative TICK: very strong afternoon trend into the close. TRIN: 1.19 . NYSE MOC: This was a sort of unusual closing auction and there was a bit of shifting back fourth with a high of about +700M to buy on 75% of the pressure to the upside leaving +238M to buy. Of that number, Consumer Services and Consumer Non-durables were the strongest sectors. SPX volume: 2.33B. NYSE total volume: -4.80% relative to Wednesday's value.
CLG19 Light crude settled up +0.9% at 52.67/barrel and GCG19 gold settled down -0.4% at 1287.50/oz. with help from the USD index (+0.36%). February gold is trading at 1286.80 (-0.39%) in the electronic session.
Debt
Treasuries sold off a bit on the $16B 30-year auction results. The 2-year note and 30-year bond were sold while the middle of the curve stayed put. The post mid-session rebound in stocks put more pressure treasuries.
The 2-year (+2 bps to 2.57%) to 10-year (unchanged at 2.73%) spread came in to 16 bps while the 2-year to 30-year (+3 bps to 3.05%) grew to 48 bps.
Volatility VIX is at 19.50 and (-2.40%), pretty much in line with yesterday's close. VXF19: 19.87 at (-1.12%) and VXG19: 20.02 and (-1.26%).
Incoming
Tomorrow's high impact data is CPI and Core CPI for December out at 08:30 ET/21:30 AWST/00:30 AET. The Treasury Budget is out at 14:00 ET.
Correction: A few typos in the last update. Apparently my stenography skills need work and I didn't sufficiently edit the Fed speaker's stuff. Fed Chair Powell implied that participants are concerned about trade war issues but that people are too pessimistic about 2019 growth. I hope you have a good trading day.
(20min delay)
