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The market almost mimicked what happened on Tuesday. All three major indices finished the day in red and the Nasdaq once again outperformed the Dow and the S&P 500. The main cause for underperformance of the Dow was weakness in financials, which triggered a 140-point drop in Dow yesterday. The news on the economic front was mostly negative. Import prices for July climbed 1.7%, exceeding 1% expected and bringing the year-over-year price increase to 21.6%, the biggest jump in at least 26 years. Import prices for June were also revised higher to 2.9%, mainly due to crude prices. Move on to retail sales. The headline figure for July was minus 0.1%, which was the first decline in five months. Excluding volatile auto sales, the revised figure was an increase of 0.4%, slightly below what economists were looking for. Removing gas and groceries, the retails sales came at a -0.3%, indicating effects of the rebate check were waning fast. Finally, business inventories for June increased 0.7%, slightly faster than 0.6% expected.
After several weeks’ underperformance, basic materials and energies were among the biggest winners for the session and each gained more than 2%. Part of the rebound was caused by a rebound in commodity prices, especially crude oil. The weekly inventory showed an unexpectedly large drawdown in gas inventory, due to less imports from abroad. On the losers’ list, we had names like financial and consumer cyclical. The CRB commodity index rebounded more than 2% and closed at 393. The US dollar moved higher against most major currencies, especially the British pound, whose central bank lowered its GDP forecast this morning. Treasuries dropped with yields moving higher. The VIX index climbed less than 2%. The market breath was negative on NYSE and neutral on Nasdaq with moderate volume.
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