Daily Insight: ADP, Chicago PMI, and Q1 Results

U.S stocks lost a little ground yesterday, falling back to the low-end of this range tight range (at least in terms of near-term standards) we’ve been in over the past 11 sessions. A disappointing employment survey got stocks off to a bad start as they hit the day’s nadir just 30 minutes into the session. The market did showed a little life by mid-day as the S&P 500 moved into positive territory, but retreated again in the final hour. With stocks closed tomorrow even as we get the March payrolls report, traders are just not willing to get in front of this data and hold those positions into the weekend.

It’s more than appropriate for the Exchange to close and observe Good Friday – don’t get me wrong I’m not at all inferring the market should open. Rather, the Labor Department should delay the employment report until Monday. The monthly jobs report is almost always released on the first Friday of the month, but this is the most market-moving data we receive and thus should be held until next week.

Only two of the major 10 industry groups closed higher yesterday, energy led the way and financials posted a slight gain. Consumer discretionary shares led the decliners, with technology and industrials rounding out the three worst performers.

Yesterday ended the first quarter and the major indices recorded another strong three-month period, marking the fourth-straight quarterly gain. Mid and small-cap stocks led the way, as the international indices lagged – you can see the results in the table below the jump via the YTD column.

For the quarter just ended, the Dow Industrials gained 4.11%; the S&P 500 added 4.87%; the NASDAQ Composite rallied 5.68%; the S&P 400 (mid-cap) surged 8.70%; the Russell 200 (small cap) jumped 8.51%. Overseas indices lagged as the main international index for developed economies rose just 0.22% and emerging markets added 2.11%
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Brent Vondera, Senior Analyst