| Index | Close | % Change |
|---|
| Dow | 34296.74 | -0.2 |
| Dow Transports | 15181.33 | -1.65 |
| Dow Utilities | 926.55 | -0.63 |
| S&P 500 | 4356.45 | -1.22 |
| Nasdaq | 13539.29 | -2.28 |
| Nasdaq 100 | 14149.12 | -2.48 |
| Russel 2000 | 2017.68 | -0.78 |
| VIX Index | 30.56 | 2.21 |
| 10 Year Gov't Yield | 1.78 | 0.56 |
| Spot Gold | 1847.64 | 0.25 |
| Spot Silver | 23.84 | -0.62 |
| GDX-Gold Miners | 31.66 | 0.67 |
| Crude Oil | 85.39 | 2.5 |
| Dollar Index | 95.99 | 0.08 |
| Euro Spot | 1.13 | -0.19 |
| Japanese 10 Year | 0.14 | 4.44 |
| Shanghai SE | 3433.06 | -2.58 |
| Long Bond 20-year | 155.22 | -0.44 |
|
Volatility Remains the Flavor of the Day
01-25-2022The indices were under pressure right off the bat (the pressure actually began overnight), though I'm not exactly sure why. I suspect it is just more propwash after yesterday's wild action. In any case, it only took about 30 minutes for the indices to lose roughly 3%. From there, they began a bounce, led by the Dow, which lasted until the last hour when they backed off again to finish with the losses that you see in the box scores.
Away from stocks, green paper was stronger again, fixed income was quite heavy, while the metals saw some pretty big swings. About 15 minutes after the stock market opened, gold squirted from $2 lower to 0.5% higher for no reason that I could see, while silver trimmed a 1.5% loss back to unchanged. From there, they see-sawed around but by day's end gold closed about $5 higher while silver lost 0.5%. The miners were once again essentially disconnected from the respective metal's prices, as they traded heavier, despite the positive action in the metals, until about two hours to go when they (mostly) managed to turn slightly green.
Now You See 'em, Now You Don't
I would imagine there will be a certain amount of jockeying in all markets as we prepare to hear the Fed try to talk out of both sides of its mouth tomorrow: promising to fight inflation and yet somehow keep the tape from falling apart. They're never going to be able to do enough for the former to stop the latter, and I don't know how they even pretend to fight inflation without hurting the stock market more than they'd like to. They're obviously in a very tight box from which there literally will be no escape without a lot of damage, but it would seem that the vast majority of investors somehow think that the Fed is essentially Houdini.