Daily Market Update – April 30, 2015 (Close)
Mid-week, just like mid-town, was a busy place to be yesterday. In addition to all of the earnings reports coming in and the continued focus on the manner in which the Twitter earnings were released and its aftermath, there were also the GDP Report and the FOMC Statement release to be digested. The Twitter earnings, while fascinating in the manner in which they were prematurely released, was a non-event. Twitter won’t ever be a stock that actually moves markets, as even its continued existence as a standalone company is called into question, as its leadership runs from crisis of faith to crisis of faith. On the other hand, the GDP Report and the FOMC Statement are meaningful, even if they don’t act as stimuli for change. Not yesterday, though. FOMC Statement release would be this morning and afternoon, respectively, but the Twitter debacle last night may still keep people’s attention for a while.The GDP Report was, as expected, not very encouraging. It failed to reflect what most everyone has been waiting for over the past 6 months. Anyone who has been waiting for a consumer led expansion of the economy has had to put those hopes on hold. While expecting nothing, the market got even less than that. At least the FOMC didn’t add to the disappointment, as it basically said nothing, other than to remove all temporal references and to re-emphasize that it would be driven by data. Today, in addition to more earnings, are also Jobless Claims and “Personal Income and Outlays” reports. The latter may be the first in a series of data points that the FOMC may use when considering a June interest rate hike, which is the time that so many had predicted it would finally become a reality. So far, it’s hard to see where the economic growth necessary to spur interest rate increases will come from, although the bond market did drive interest rates higher yesterday. While they are generally thought to understand macro-economic events better than stock traders, the bond market has been really volatile of late, so there’s no real reason to believe that they know anything more than the next guy at the moment. As this morning’s reports were released Jobless claims were well reduced, but personal income and spending left something to be desired and the pre-opening markets were basically unchanged. With yesterday’s weakness, the prospects of rollovers or assignments was made more distant and this morning’s pre-open futures didn’t appear as they will be helping the situation. But at least the morning’s news didn‘t drive them deeper into the red, so there was always hope as the next 2 days would unfold and more earnings are released and maybe an FOMC Governor or two say something during prepared remarks that might goose the market a little higher before Friday’s expirations roll around. That was the hope, anyway. Sounds great on paper, but that’s not the way it worked out as the market may have just realized that nothing is really there to give any one a reason to keep pushing the “buy” button. With at least an opportunity to rollover shares of United Continental the day wasn’t a complete loss. Interestingly, while just about everything was lower today, those positions that are expiring tomorrow, while now further away from their strikes, didn’t suffer as badly as the overall market. So there always some hope for tomorrows’s trading, although it is disappointing that April 2015 goes out on such a negative note and barely finished the month higher, in contrast to the way Aprils are usually expected to perform.
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