Market Rises on Good IP Report

The stock market is being helped this morning by a positive report on Industrial Production. The Federal Reserve said that Industrial Production rose by 0.7% in March, and they revised the February number up to 1.2%. The Manufacturing part of IP rose by 0.5% last month, and by 1.4% in February. These are pretty good numbers. The warmer weather appears to have thawed the economy as well.

Economists also like to look at capacity utilization which tells us what percentage of our plants are being used. For March, capacity utilization rose to 79.2% which is the highest since June 2008. This stat can be an early warning sign for inflation.

The S&P 500 is above 1,850 this morning. This looks to be our third-straight daily gain. To recap, the index hit an intra-day high on April 4 of 1,897.28, and it dropped to as low as 1,814.36 on April 11. That’s a drop of 4.4%. Our Buy List is holding on to gains this morning. The big news will come after the close when IBM ($IBM) reports earnings.

Posted by on April 16th, 2014 at 10:23 am


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