Factory Orders Fall

The stock market continues to be sluggish this morning. As I write this, the S&P 500 stands at 1,274. The index has fallen below its 200-day moving average and the number we’re watching now is 1,277.14. That will mark a 10% fall from the market’s peak on April 2nd. This would be the S&P 500’s third 10% correction in the last 12 months.

Wall Street is still reeling from Friday’s awful jobs report. There’s now more talk of QE3. Until now, I’ve strongly doubted that another round of quantitative easing is on the way, and I’m still a doubter until we hear more clues from the Federal Reserve. Incidentally, Ben Bernanke will be speaking before Congress this Thursday.

We’ve had an incredible string of bad economic news lately. Despite last week having only four business days, there were 21 economic reports, and 18 of them came in weaker than expected. Today we learned that factory orders fell by 0.6% in April. The March figure was revised to a drop of 2.1%. This the first time we’ve had back-to-back declines in three years.

Posted by on June 4th, 2012 at 11:06 am


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