Wednesday, April 30, 2008

FED announcement disappoints investors

Stocks really wanted to go up today & tried hard, but after digesting the FED's rate cut & what they had to say, sold off. Dow had been flirting with 13K & S&P 500 topped 1400, both important ceilings, but they could not keep the gains. In the last hour, Dow sold off about 175 to 12820. For the day, the averages ended slightly underwater although the internals were a little better with advancers a little ahead of decliners. For what it's worth, volume of 1.44B was slightly higher than in the recent past. The month turned out to be good. Dow was up more than 500 after a lousy start in Q1.

Markets were debating whether this is the end of rate cuts for awhile. Maybe. With low rates & more signs of inflation becoming a bigger problem, they can be expected to proceed cautiously on new rate cuts. "Rates on hold" is a new buzz phrase which seemed to be the thinking driving down stocks in the last hour of trading. For what it's worth, oil fell 2.17 to 113.46. But that remains high enough to drive gas prices up many more notches at the pump.

Starbucks (SBUX) was essentially even on down profits. I don't drink coffee but it's such a well known brand, hard to ignore it. CNBC had an excellent interview with Dr. Eric Schmidt CEO of Google (GOOG) sending the stock up 15.82. Check it out!

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