WalMart sales and earnings a disappointment.
Thursday, February 18, 2010. 9:15 am.
WalMart released its 4th quarter financial report this morning, reporting its earnings were up 22%, but with much of it due to cost-cutting. Its overall sales rose only 4.4%, its third straight quarter of slower sales growth, and falling short of Wall street’s estimates, while same store sales (stores open more than a year) fell 1.6%.
Gold plunged last night on IMF announcement,
Gold plunged sharply at the end of the day yesterday, and again in the night session last night. After being as high as $1128 early in the day, gold was down a big $32 an ounce at $1,096 at its low last night. It has since recovered some, trading at $1,108.
The catalyst for the plunge was an announcement at day’s end from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that it will be selling 191.3 metric tonnes of gold on the market ‘shortly’.
Yesterday in the U.S. Stock Market.
The market traded in a very narrow range, uncertain whether to rally further or sell off. The Dow traded in a range of just 60 points from its intraday high to its intraday low, and closed up 40 points, 0.4%, thanks to late day buy programs.
Yesterday’s intraday chart:
The Dow closed up 40 points, 0.4%. The S&P 500 closed up 0.4%. The NYSE Composite closed up 0.3%. The Nasdaq closed up 0.5%. The Russell 2000 closed up 0.6%. The DJ Transportation Avg. closed up 0.2%.
Asian markets were mostly down last night.
China, Taiwan, and Vietnam markets remain closed for the rest of the week for extended Lunar New Year holidays.
Among individual countries:
Australia closed down 0.3%. Hong Kong closed down 0.5%. Japan closed up 0.3%. India closed down 0.6%. Singapore closed down 0.9%. South Korea closed down 0.4%.
If you’d like to see a three-month chart of these indexes and others, click here, and then click on any of the markets in the list at the left side of the page it takes you to.
Markets this morning.
European markets are off earlier highs after U.S. economic reports this morning, now up only fractionally on average of about 0.2%.
Oil is just about unchanged at $76.32 at the moment.
Gold is off last night’s low, but still down $12 an ounce at $1,108, although still up $16, or 1.5%, for the week so far.
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Markets in the U.S.
In the U.S., this holiday-shortened week is an average week for potential market-moving economic reports, including new housing starts, the minutes of the Fed’s last FOMC meeting, and the Producer Price Index. To see the full schedule of this week’s reports click here, and look at the left side of the page it takes you to.
Two of today’s reports were released at 8:30 and were negative surprises.
It was reported that the Producer Price Index, measuring inflation at the producer level, rose 1.4% in January. The core rate (with the cost of food and energy removed) rose 0.3%.
And it was reported that new unemployment claims jumped an unexpected 31,000 last week.
Coupled with WalMart’s mixed sales and earnings report, the economic reports weakened our early morning indicators further.
Our pre-open indicators are somewhat negative, pointing to the Dow being down 35 points or so in the early going.
Stock Market Patterns.
There is no weekly pattern for this week.
The daily pattern is for the day after the Presidents Day holiday to be a down day (down 4 out of the last 5 years), but it certainly was not yesterday, and for Friday, the day of this month’s options expirations, to be down (down 7 of the last 10 years). The pattern around the holiday began with its frequent pattern of the day before the holiday being down (down 15 of last 18 years, now 16 of last 19 years).
Interesting Charts of the Morning.
It’s interesting that the dollar has been in its new bull market since early December, which means it’s been going up independent of other assets, during periods when the stock market and gold were declining, and when they were rallying.
Please scroll down to see other recent ‘Interesting Charts of the Morning’ and commentary.
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