U.S. stocks gained a little more ground Thursday, extending the winning streak to six sessions, as strong regional manufacturing reports and an upbeat earnings pre-announcement from UPS offset troubling jobless claims figures, the rolling concern over European sovereign debt, and the lowest UK consumer confidence reading since July 2008 that had pre-market trading lower.
The numbers out of the manufacturing sector are really very good, but that’s about all we’ve got right now. If we’re going to pass this ball off from government stimulus to something that can achieve just mild economic growth without all of this support then we’re going to need big employment gains.
The UPS report was a good one, at least in relative terms as we’re coming out of two years of depressed package volume, but it showed domestic activity remained weak. Package volumes rose 24% within countries outside of the U.S., and make no mistake this is driven by China’s huge stimulus efforts, but U.S. shipments rose less than 1%.
Just three of the top ten industry groups closed higher on the session, led by industrials shares. Information technology and consumer discretionary shares were the other two winners. Financials led the seven industry groups that fell, health-care yet again was near the bottom of the list as it held the penultimate spot. Regulation that will cap health insurer profits have obviously led to investor unease.
Brent Vondera, Senior Analyst
www.acrinv.com
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