每日市場點評 --- June 2, 2008

The market didn’t give investors a pleasant new-month surprise like it did in each of the previous two months. Instead, all three major indices ended the first session of June lower by more than 1%. The news on the economic front actually came slightly better than expected. The May ISM index, which is a national manufacturing survey, increased 2.1% to 49.6 while economists expected a flat reading. Digging a little deeper, we can see that exports increased to 59.5 from 57.5; imports increased to 49.5(although a reading below 50 still indicates a contraction) from 48.0 and prices increased to 87.0 from 84.5. Clearly, exports have become the major engine behind the overall economy. In fact, it has good chance to accomplish the magic of preventing the economy from running into recession despite continuous turmoil in the housing market. In a separate report, we had April construction spending decrease by 0.4%, which was slightly better than consensus of -0.6%. However, worsening situation in the UK mortgage lending market and a rating downgrade of several major brokerage firms by the S&P killed any hope of a meaningful rebound.

Commodities were among the few winning sectors in today’s trading. Financials, technologies and transportations were among noticeable losers. The CRB commodity index regained some ground after a 2% slump in the previous week. The US dollar was mixed against major currencies. Treasuries rallied across the board with the yield curve steepened. The VIX index, which is usually used as a fear indicator, jumped more than 10%. But at 19.83, it remained too low to trigger any capitulation rally. The market breath was quite negative as down volume outpaced up volume by a ratio of 3 to 1 on both NYSE and Nasdaq. However, the overall volume was quite tame.