The Buzz on Business for February 12th, 2024

On Friday, most of the indexes were up. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down. On Monday, the Dow was up, and by a fair amount. But much of the rest of the market couldn’t hold on to gains, sold off in the afternoon, and closed with losses. The internals look good, advances led decliners, and volume was okay. But two days of divergences has got us worried.

Stock Market Report

• A new all-time high for the Dow Jones Industrials. Why am I worried? They were up 126 points. That's over three-tenths of a percent and closed at 38,797.
• The S&P 500 managed to stay above 5,000, but it was down almost five points. That's one-tenth of a percent and closed at 5,022.
• The tech-heavy NASDAQ had a little tougher go of it. It was down three-tenths of a percent. That's 48 points and closed at 15,943.
• The small-cap Russell 2000 actually had a pretty good day. It was up 2%. That's 40 points, and it starts the day today at 2,049.
• The RSP was up seven-tenths of a percent.
• The SOXL was up strong in the morning but sold off into the close. It was down four-tenths of a percent on the session.

Bond Market Report

Bonds joined in the schizophrenic action. Rates were up at the shorter end of the curve and down on the longer-term paper, but there was really little change among interest rates on Monday.

• The yield on the 2-year treasury was down less than a tick. It closed at 4.48%.
• The 20-year treasury closed basically flat. It starts the day today at 4.489%.

Oil, Gold, and Bitcoin

• Unlike stocks, oil was down early in the day but rallied into the close for a small gain. It was up $0.34 and closed at $76.88 a barrel.
• Gold closed at $2,033, off $5.70
• Bitcoin is going crazy. It cracked the $50,000 mark on Monday before settling back to close at $49,927, up $1,757.

No Data Monday. CPI Today

The big story on Monday was that there really were no stories. Five companies reported earnings during the day on Monday. Five green numbers and none will move the market one way or the other.

Likewise, nothing at all on the economic calendar. It is literally blank. But that will all change at 8:30 am Eastern Time this morning. That’s when the CPI complex begins to roll out. Expectations are that inflation increased by 0.2% in the month of January. That's still above the Fed's target of 2% per year. But we've come a long way, baby. We also get the year-over-year and Core CPI numbers as well.

No economic news tomorrow, Happy Valentine's Day. But it picks up again on Thursday when we get initial and continuing jobless claims, the retail sales complex, and industrial production, which we will be watching closely.

Everyone here at World Headquarters is working a mandatory double shift to parse and analyze all the data for you. All you have to do is keep it right here on the Buzz.