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The market finished the last trading session of May in a mixed fashion. The Nasdaq continued its recent strength and posted a gain of around 0.5% while the Dow gave back less than 0.1%. For the month, the discrepancy is more distinct however. The Dow, dragged by components such as GM and AIG, fell 1.4%. The Nasdaq, on the other hand, rose 4.6% while the S&P500 was somewhat in the middle with 1.1% gain for the month. Similar to yesterday, the news on the economic front was more or less in line with expectation. Both April personal consumption and income increased 0.2% from the previous month. Although the rate was only half of that in March, it nonetheless indicated consumers were not holding their spending even with historical high gasoline price. The Chicago PMI, which was a regional manufacturing survey, came at 49.1 while economists expected a reading of 48.5. However, it should be noted it was the fourth straight month that manufacturing activities in the region were contracting. Then we had the revised University of Michigan consumer sentiment reading for May, which was changed slightly higher to 59.8 from 59.5. But it was still the worst consumer sentiment in 28 years.
Commodities had a nice rebound following yesterday’s sharp sell off. The CRB commodity index also finished the day higher by 1%. Transportations were also doing well with the Dow Transportation Average sitting at a new closing high for the year. Treasuries ended the losing streak and rebounded at the last session of the month. However, it was lower for the second straight month while equities in general were outperforming during the same period. The US dollar was mixed against the major currencies.
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