Daily Insight: Jobless Claims, Import Prices, On the Dole

U.S. stocks spent most of the session bobbing around the cut line (the opening price for new readers), but slid in the final 90 minutes to make it two up and two down for the week thus far.

The fact that regulators have moved beyond Goldman Sachs and are now scrutinizing eight banks with regard to their mortgage-bond deals certainly didn’t help investor sentiment.

Also, a couple of retailers forecast weak same-store sales results for the second quarter, which led to some worries about today’s retail sale report for April.

Finally, more people seem to be talking about what we mentioned yesterday: a European economy that has become heavily dependent on government spending isn’t going to respond well to the necessary austerity plans coming from EU members.

Consumer discretionary shares led the declines (been a while since that happened as performance-chasing behavior in the sector has been running wild), with financials not far behind. Of the 10 major industry groups, only telecoms gained ground for the session.
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Brent Vondera, Senior Analyst
www.acrinv.com