The only really important bit of financial news today was the Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment figure for August. It declined to 63.2 from 66 in May. The consensus among economists polled by MarketWatch was the August's figure would be 69. The portion of the poll called the "expectations index" hit its lowest level since March.
That is particularly bad news because March was the depth of the recession. Analysts were at a loss to explain why the consumer's picture of the economy had turned sour so fast. It is certainly a sign a rebound in spending may be well off in the future, which could be bad news for the upcoming holiday season.
Today's unofficial closing numbers:
Dow 9,321.40 -76.79 (-0.82%)
S&P 500 1,004.09 -8.64 (-0.85%)
Nasdaq 1,985.52 -23.83 (-1.19%)
A much less important piece of data that came out early in the day was consumer prices for July, which remained unchanged, certainly a sign the shopping for goods and services remains slow.
There were few big moves among well known stocks.
The Boeing Company (NYSE: BA) fell as much as 5% on news that its Dreamliner was suffering further production delays.
Blockbuster Inc. (NYSE: BBI) dropped over 15% after announcing that it lost over 25% of its revenue in the last quarter.
No one should be surprised at a very modest pullback of a little over 1% on bad news. Most experts already thought the market had gone too far too fast.
Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 24/7 Wall St.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
8-14-2009 @ 5:13PM
Beltway Greg said...
What drove the market today? The allegations that Bernie Madoff had an affair with his secretary. Previously, I gave him the benefit of the doubt but now I really don't know. He may be an uncaring, callous individual. Looks like Ruth was in the dark about a few other things too.
BTW, using consumer sentiment as a gauge makes about as much sense as what I just wrote. It's a very poor predictor.