SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Alcoa Kicks Off the 2Q Earnings Season

After the bell Alcoa beat earnings and revenues to kick off the second quarter earnings season.

It was interesting to hear Matt Miller and Barry Ritholtz on Bloomberg TV extrapolating a strong year for the SP 500 stocks off this one result.  And it was funny to see Julie Hyman correct Barry's mistake about the increase in Alcoa's revenues, which were flat year over year.  She is often a breath of fresh air in the fog of endless jawboning.

I did take off the short position I had put on US equities on Thursday. It was a fairly cynical bet on a standard 'wash and rinse.' Now we can see if anything more significant develops, but for now its the same old, same old.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Gold and Silver Cap and Consolidate

Not much happened in the gold and silver markets, with both closing almost unchanged.

This was a very dull trade, with more nonsensical things being said in the media.

Dave from Denver reports that there were some gyrations in the JNUG junior miners ETF into the close:

"At 3:59 p.m. 60,000 shares of JNUG trade and drop the price from a high of $27.05 to a low of $26.43 - all within 60 seconds. Then at the close, 30,000 shares trade and cause JNUG to bounce back up to its close of $27.06.

4.6% of JNUG's total volume traded today in the last 120 seconds. Over the entire course of the trading day - 6.5 hours - JNUG averaged 4,974 share per minute. In the last two minutes it averaged 45,000 share per minute."

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Dog Days

 

An exceptionally boring day as the US markets reopened after the three day holiday weekend.

Stocks were weak for most of the day, but rebounded slightly off the lows into the close.

These are the real dog days of summer, and volumes are lackluster to say the least.

Have a pleasant evening.

Moyers: The Truth Versus Washington DC's Propaganda Machines

Related: Why I Left 60 Minutes by Charles Lewis