A Do-Nothing Market Session

[Excerpted from Bill Cara's Daily Report]

After a do-nothing session, the S&P 500 (880.02 +0.46 +0.05%), DJIA (8,172.89 -5.52 -0.07%), and NASDAQ (1,748.52 +1.35 +0.08%) closed about as close to motionless as possible.

There were no remarkable gains or losses in the leading sectors. The winners were Basic Materials (XLB +1.7%) and Financials (XLF +1.5%), while Healthcare (XLV -0.7%) was the only loser of the market’s ten sectors.

In typical algo programmed hedge fund trading, Semi-conductors ($SOX +1.5%) were bought and Hospitals ($RXH -1.3%) were sold. Nothing else really moved. Volume was very weak.

The Cara 100 tables indicate that the strongest on the day were Deutsche Bank and SanDisk (DB +6.0% SNDK +5.2%). Apache (APA +4.5%) had a nice run, closing at 69.08. We almost closed the previous day’s short put at a +100% gain (not bad for one day), but decided to take different action when late-session prices settled back in the oils.

Friday morning, Commodity prices are getting hammered, with the $USD soaring, but yesterday the $USD (79.87 -0.79 -0.98%) was soft, which helped Gold (913.00 +3.40 +0.37%) and Oil (60.41 +0.27 +0.45%). However, these two were at respective highs of 989.80 5 weeks ago and 73.90 4 weeks ago.

The Toronto markets were quiet as well. The Toronto Composite (9,647.06 -6.39 -0.07%) and the Toronto Venture bourse (1,036.26 +2.24 +0.22%) were almost flat on the session.

In so-called fixed income trading, the US long Bond was very strong ($USB 121.25 +1.83 +1.53%). The Treasury yields for 30-year (4.241 -0.77 -1.78%), 10-year (3.325 -0.88 -2.58%), and 5-year (2.242 -0.79 -3.40%) were all down sharply. The Treasury bill yield was quiet at 0.170.

In USD trading on the Thursday, the Yen (108.08 +0.44 +0.41%), Loonie (86.21 +0.52 +0.61%), Euro (139.56 +0.80 +0.58%) and Pound (162.01 +1.33 +0.83%) were all winners against the US Dollar yesterday; but that is not the case this morning as the $USD is soaring, and the Euro (1.3911 -0.0124 -0.88% 08:12am ET) is down almost -1%.

Earlier Friday, Austral-Asian equity markets were soft except for Australia (3,790.6 +0.78%). Japan’s Nikkei 225 (9,287.3 -0.04%), China (3,113.9 -0.29%), Hong Kong (17,708.4 -0.46%) and India (13,504.2 -1.84%) were all down.

The European equity bourses were soft earlier Friday morning. The French CAC (3,000.9 8:22AM ET -0.83%), German DAX (4,601.1 8:07AM ET -0.63%) and UK FTSE 100 (4,132.2 8:07AM ET -0.64%) were all down just under -1%.

Spot gold, palladium, platinum and silver are weak Friday morning: (908.26 -5.24 -0.57% 08:26am ET); (233 -1 -0.43% 08:16am ET); (1085.5 -17.5 -1.59% 08:22am ET); and (12.58 -0.26 -2.02% 08:26am ET), respectively.

The Euro was very weak (1.3911 -0.0124 -0.88% 08:12am ET).

Crude oil was also weak (59.03 -1.38 -2.29% 08:12 am ET).