By DAVID BIRD Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES NEW YORK -- Crude oil futures prices jumped above $53 a barrel at mid-morning Friday, and were closing in a one-month high amid fresh cash inflows, traders said. Prices set higher highs and higher lows for the third straight day, laying the foundation for what is largely a technical breakout amid scant fundamental news. "There may be some new buying by funds at the beginning of the month helping us along here," said Tom Bentz, broker and analyst at BNP Paribas.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Banks-health-jobs-report-test/story.aspx?guid={48760349-7568-496E-8419-9AAB8145141B} "It's an interesting time as the market is starting to take a breather," said Alec Young, market strategist at Standard & Poor's. "We've had a better news flow but we need to keep feeding the beast and keep the good news going." Over the past week, the market managed to continue its advance, even after a choppy start. Fears that swine flu would hit the travel and food industries -- and an already fragile global economy -- curbed markets in the first part of the week. But those fears dissipated as U.S. data continued to signal that the pace of decline of the economy continued to slow. 1) Now, there's certainly a lot ahead next week," said Peter Cardillo, market economist at Avalon Partners. "We've got the grand daddy of all reports with the jobs report. But it looks like it might confirm what other indicators have showed: that the worst is over, that the pace of the decline is slowing and that the economy is on the mend." 2) Ahead of the jobs report Friday, the market will get an early read on private-sector employment from ADP on Wednesday. 3) On Monday, data on pending home sales for March will be released. On Tuesday, the Institute of Supply Management is due to report its April index for the service sector of the economy. 4) And Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is due to testify before Congress. Stressed out banks 5) The other big hurdle will be the results on Thursday of the government's Supervisory Capital Assessment Program, otherwise known as the "stress test" imposed on 19 major banks. The Federal Reserve has already said that "most U.S. banking organizations" had enough capital. "But the reference was to 'most' not 'all'," said Michael Gregory, market analyst at BMO Capital Markets, in a note. "Given the subsequent negative equity market reaction to media reports this week saying Bank of America and Citigroup had capital shortfalls, raising new equity could prove problematic for some banks," he said. 6) Earnings beat Finally, another 84 S&P 500 companies are due to report next week, including two Dow components, Kraft Foods Inc. , both of which report on Tuesday. So far, S&P 500 companies overall are expected to have seen first-quarter earnings fall 35.1% from the year earlier quarter, according to Thomson Financial. Of companies that have already reported, 66% have beat expectations, better than the average 63% in recent quarters. "But it's not so much the number of companies beating expectations but the magnitude by which they beat that's impressive," said John Butters, earnings analyst at Thomson. Actual earnings have come in 10% above estimates on average, he said, sharply above the average seen in recent quarters. Results have been boosted by improved results at the likes of Citigroup and Bank of America, which benefited from government help, easier comparisons to the year earlier and relaxed accounting rules.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/buffett-sees-some-housing-market/story.aspx?guid={87B652DA-03A2-4A86-B74A-C281E7BE3A46}&dist=TNMostRead May 2, 2009 OMAHA , Neb. (MarketWatch) -- Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett said Saturday that he sees some signs of stabilization in housing markets. "In the last few months you've seen a real pickup in activity although at much lower prices," Buffett said, citing data from Berkshire's real estate brokerage business, which is one of the largest in the U.S. In California, medium and lower priced homes -- under $750,000 -- have been selling more, although there hasn't been a bounce back in sale prices, Buffett explained. "We see something close to stability at these much-reduced prices in the medium to lower part of the market," Buffett said. Roughly 1.3 million households are created each year in the U.S., while about two million homes were being built a year during the recent boom, Buffett added. At that rate, "you will run into trouble," he said. Now housing starts are running at roughly 500,000 units a year, which means the excess inventory is being absorbed at a rate of about 700,000 to 800,000 units a year, Buffett said. "We're going to eat up inventory. That may take a couple of years. When it gets done you will have stabilization in housing prices," Buffett predicted. "Then you will have demand for more housing starts." U.S. house prices fell 18.6% the year to February, according to the Case-Shiller index that tracks prices in 20 major cities. However, the rate of decline has slowed as the government tries to keep mortgage rates low to stimulate demand. The Federal Reserve has slashed interest rates and committed to buying hundreds of billions of dollars in mortgages backed by government-controlled housing finance giants Fannie Mae . That's helped push mortgage rates to record lows, luring some buyers and fueling a small refinance boom. Buffett warned about over-valued house prices before the market collapsed. However, he kept large stakes in banks such as Wells Fargo, which have huge housing market exposures.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Oil-h...14225.html?sec=topStories&pos=3&asset=&ccode= Oil hovers at $53 as traders eye possible recovery Oil hovers above $53 in Asia as investors look for signs US economy on recovery path A consensus is growing among traders that perhaps the global economy, led by the U.S., has bottomed and turned the corner toward a recovery. Since March 9, the Dow Jones industrials are up 25.4 percent and the Standard & Poor's 500 index is up 29.7 percent. Asian stock markets also advanced Monday. - Two key indicators of the economy's health that investors will be eyeing this week are the U.S. government's assessment of the health of 19 big banks on Thursday - and April employment data on Friday. American employers cut 663,000 jobs in March sending the unemployment rate up to 8.5 percent, the highest level in more than 25 years. "Markets are certainly becoming more optimistic about the international economic outlook, and that's reflected in stocks and commodities, including oil," said David Moore, commodity strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney. However, large crude inventories and slumping demand continue to drag on prices, which have traded near $50 a barrel for about a month. "Inventories are still at very high levels, and while gasoline demand has leveled, distillate fuel demand is still very weak," Moore said. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries meets May 28 to discuss a potential production cut. OPEC has announced 4.2 million barrels a day of output quota reductions since September, but left production levels unchanged at its last meeting in March. "If prices stay near where they're at, the market will expect OPEC to leave production targets where they are, and make more noise about compliance of existing cuts," Moore said.
Weekly Recap - Week ending 01-May-09 The major indices resumed their two-month advance this week, albeit modestly, with the bulk of gains coming on Wednesday -- S&P 500 +1.3%, Dow +1.7%, Nasdaq +1.5%, Russell 2000 +1.7%. It was a choppy, volatile week of trade due to a myriad of catalysts, beginning with swine flu on Monday and ending with the announcement on Friday of a delay for the release of the government's bank stress tests. Investors got into work Monday morning with equity futures sharply lower on reports of a swine flu outbreak. On Sunday, Janet Napolitano, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary, declared a "public health emergency" in the U.S. as about 20 people at the time were confirmed to have been infected, though none seriously ill. The influenza remained a headline throughout the week, and by Friday the World Health Organization announced that the worldwide total for confirmed cases of the virus had risen to 331, up from 257 the prior day. Mexico has officially reported seven deaths from the virus and the U.S. has reported one, while no other countries have reported deaths. A number of industries have felt the effects of the outbreak, most notably the pork industry. The travel industry was also under pressure this week, including airlines and cruise operators. Hotels were under pressure early in the week, but managed to regain most of their losses on a number of better-than-expected earnings releases. There were benefactors, however, particularly the drugmakers. Switching gears, economic data based on surveys have been strong over the last couple of weeks, and that trend continued this week. On Tuesday, Consumer Confidence came in at a better-than-expected 39.2 for April, well above the 29.7 consensus estimate. On Thursday it was Chicago PMI's turn, as it came in at a better-than-expected 40.1 for April vs. the 35.0 consensus. Finally on Friday, ISM Manufacturing came in at a better-than-expected 40.1, above the 38.4 consensus. That's not to say all economic data have been positive. Wednesday's Advanced reading for first quarter GDP came in at a much weaker-than-expected -6.1% (consensus -4.7%), in part because inventory contraction sliced a whopping 2.8% off the change. Real PCE rose at a stronger-than-expected 2.2% annual rate, but the business data were terrible -- investment in software and equipment fell at a 33.8% annual rate, while nonresidential construction spending fell at a 44.2% annual rate. Residential construction spending continued to plunge, and was down at a 38.0% annual rate, while government spending fell at a 3.9% annual rate as state and defense spending contracted. However, Wednesday proved to be the market's big day as stocks shrugged off the GDP figure and rallied ahead of the FOMC's rate decision and policy statement that afternoon. The FOMC kept its key interest rate in a range of 0.00%-0.25%, as expected, and seemed to carefully word its policy statement so as not to spook the market. But as always, the release was followed by volatility, with the major indices spiking to new highs shortly after, only to see aggressive profit taking in the final hour of trade. In the end, the S&P gained 2.1%. Thursday was another volatile session for the market, as it got off to an impressive start, only to lose those gains after reports confirmed Chrysler would declare bankruptcy. Talks between the Treasury Department and lenders aimed at keeping the automaker out of bankrupcty broke down Wendesday evening, particularly with a group of hedge funds that owned approximately 30% of the company's debt and voted no to the government's offer. Friday proved to be an extremely slow, but modestly higher session. The big headline of the day came late morning when a government source said it would announce information on the bank stress tests late afternoon on Thursday, May 7, later than the original date of May 4. This follows a slew of headlines on the tests throughout the week. They began on Tuesday when reports indicated regulators had told Bank of America (BAC) and Citigroup (C) that they may need to raise additional capital based on early results of the tests. Reportedly, Bank of America's capital hole is in the billions, while it wasn't clear how big a capital deficit Citigroup faces. Speculation continued throughout the week until today's announcement. Looking ahead to next week, earnings results will continue to come out at a fast pace, but note a number of the bigger companies have already reported. Economic data will be light until Friday's (5/8) Nonfarm Payrolls report for April. And before that, as mentioned above, investors will finally see the results of the government's bank stress tests late afternoon on Thursday (5/7).
I'm trading all day. Idea's today, Soybeans, am looking for a retracement to get long. We have broken out of a range that has held for 7 months on high volume. Crude; looking for a long around 52.80 or failing that 51.70. Will fade on smaller size off resistance.
Brave in my opinion. I said I was going to fade and would normally short here as well but there seems to much support on the bullside. Stocks higher, dollar hitting resistance and high volume upward rotations.