Another Lucky Tuesday

The stock market is up again today, at least by a little bit. Interestingly, Tuesdays have been the lucky day of the year. So far, the S&P 500 has risen on 13 of the 15 Tuesdays in 2014.

Today is also a big day for earnings. We have four Buy List stocks due to report after the close. This is also the beginning of a two-day Fed meeting, so expect a lot of news this week.

In yesterday’s market, we saw a big split between value and growth stocks. That’s continuing today, but not as wide. The split between Value and Growth, which has been so big last month, slowed down over the past few weeks, but it’s heated up again. This could last for a while.

In economic news, today’s Case-Shiller Index showed that home prices rose 12.9% over the past year through February. Also, consumer confidence fell a bit in April. The Conference Board Index dropped from 83.9 to 82.3. Consumer confidence is still near a six-year high.

A quick word about the bond market. I’ve been surprised at how steady rates have been. The 10-year yield has been locked in a trading range, between 2.6% and 2.8%, for three months. The bond market has been much stronger this year than I expected.

Yesterday, Bank of America ($BAC) dropped sharply today after the company said it was abandoning its dividend increase and share buyback plan. The bank said it discovered flaws in the info it provided to the Fed for its stress test. BAC had planned to raise its dividend from one penny to five cents per share. That’s embarrassing but they did the right thing by coming clean. By many measures, BAC seems cheap, but I won’t even consider it until they start paying a respectable dividend.

One interesting note about BAC. Due to its low share price, it’s a favorite among traders. The stock usually tops the daily list of high volume stocks. BAC trades an average of 109 million shares each day. Wow! That’s more than 4,600 shares every second, and it’s much higher than that towards the opening and closing bells. Yesterday, BAC traded an astounding 344 million shares, including 20 million in the first five minutes.

Posted by on April 29th, 2014 at 11:02 am


The information in this blog post represents my own opinions and does not contain a recommendation for any particular security or investment. I or my affiliates may hold positions or other interests in securities mentioned in the Blog, please see my Disclaimer page for my full disclaimer.