June 3 Stock Market Snap Shot

So nothing has fundamentally changed (at least in the US, not sure about other countries, like Latvia, for example) from yesterday, but the stock market seems to have entered that phase again where "bad news is treated as bad, not-so-bad news is treated as bad, good news is treated as bad". Not that the news today is necessarily bad; it is mixed.

• The ADP Employment Report said job losses during May totaled 532,000, which is close to what was expected and down from the previous month.
• The ISM Services Index for May came in at 44.0, which was largely in-line with the consensus forecast, and up slightly from the previous reading.
• Factory orders for April increased 0.7%, which is slightly below the 0.9% increase that was expected, but up from March.

The numbers are either in-line or close to it, and they all show improvement from the previous month/reading. But the "good" part is being ignored today, and the focus is back to the "bad" - not quite as expected.

Unexpected rise in oil inventories is putting the pressure on oil price and the stocks of oil companies, but again, there are many days when a lower oil price is cheered by the market.

Since this market seems nothing but psychology for quite some time, what's weighing on the market today may be found on Capitol Hill.

Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, just finished his testimony in front of the House Budget Committee, in which he urged the Congress and the Obama admin to start adressing the record budget deficit before it begins to affect investor confidence. (But he saw nothing wrong with the Fed's monetization, a.k.a printing money, disagreeing with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel.) He also said the recovery will be slow. His prepared statement is here, and the video of his testimony is here.

There are more to come from Capitol Hill. At 2:00 pm EST, the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets will have a hearing on the present and future prospect of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. At 2:30pm, the Senate Commerce Committee will conduct a hearing on Chrysler/GM dealership closure. Both should be interesting.

At 1: 46 pm EST, Dow is down 134 points (1.53%) to 8,607, Nasdaq is down 19 points (1.60%) to 1,807, S&P 500 is down 20 points (2.18%) to 924. They are slamming the gold (down $16 to $964), crude oil is down $2.85 to $65.70.

FYI, stocks going up today on my stock watching panel (scattered far between), other than short ETFs, are TLT (long-term Treasury ETF), AAPL (Apple), BIDU (Baidu), IBB (biotech ETF), UUP (US dollar ETF), MCD (MacDonald), WMT (Wall-Mart ), SBUX (Starbucks), V (Visa), MW (Men's Warehouse), APL (Atlas Pipeline). If you see a pattern in here, please let me know.

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