Three Days in a Row

Wall Street had another good day today. The S&P 500 gained 10.74 points to close at 1,307.41. That’s an advance of 0.83%. The four-day rally now totals a gain of 3.07%. A further retest of the 200-DMA is very possible, but this most recent bounce looks pretty good.

With one day left in the first half of 2011, the S&P 500 is up nearly 5% for the year including dividends. That’s roughly inline with the long-term average.

The most interesting market lately has been the bond market. Yields on most Treasuries have gapped higher in the past few days. Outside of very short-term rates, yields are up around 20 to 30 basis points. Last Thursday, the yield on the five-year Treasury dropped as low as 1.37% yet today it got as high as 1.73%.

That’s a big move for such a short period. Rather than representing a shift in sentiment, it seems that the unusual trading previously due to Greece is slowly unwinding. For example, shares of AFLAC ($AFL) have slowly recovered and they dipped their heads just above $46 today. JPMorgan ($JPM) also had a good day today. The stock gained 2.3%.

Oracle ($ORCL) got as high as $32.68 today, which just makes me laugh. There hasn’t been one important piece of information that should have changed anyone’s mind on this stock since earnings came out. Not one! The market is simply coming to its senses.

Medtronic ($MDT) lost 2.36% today due to the bad news I mentioned earlier. After the market close, Fiserv ($FISV) announced it is buying CashEdge for $465 million and that the transaction won’t impact this year’s earnings-per-share.

I’ve said before that this is a slow week. Except for tomorrow being the last day of the quarter, not much is going on. I will be curious to see this Friday’s ISM report. The last report (the one for May) was much worse than I expected. It will be interesting to see if this is a trend.

Posted by on June 29th, 2011 at 6:48 pm


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