Financial Aggregator

An interesting change of pace in the market today: In spite of US dollar weakness that pushed the greenback back down toward its 52-week low established earlier this week, the equities market was not able to stage a sustainable rally. In fact, it was itself mired in weakness for most of the session (although a late-day upswing contained losses on the S&P 500 and on the Dow). While dollar weakness did not boost equities today, it did encourage buying in gold (which rallied to yet another new all-time high above $1153 per ounce).

Initial market weakness was attributed to poor housing data, with housing starts (i.e., the construction of homes and apartments) in October falling by 10.6% and coming in strongly below expectations. Economists had been calling for 600,000 new units whereas actual reported housing starts for October came in at an annualized 529,000. The number of building permits was also lower than expected. This weak showing of the housing market may have stirred some investor worries about the strength of the US economic recovery.

Among today’s other economic data releases, it was reported that the Consumer Price Index for October was up 0.3% (slightly above consensus estimates of an increase of 0.2%); core CPI was up 0.2% (also slightly above economists’ expectations).

The NASDAQ’s underperformance today can be attributed to troubling outlook and earnings reports from Autodesk and from Salesforce.com. In addition, Wall Street darling Research in Motion was the object of a negative brokerage report suggesting the Blackberry maker could face increased competition. While technology issues sagged, there was however counteracting strength in the financial and materials sectors.

Thursday:
	8:30 AM CONTINUING CLAIMS Nov-07: 5620K / 5631K 10:30 AM INITIAL CLAIMS Nov-15: 502K / 502K 10:00 AM PHILADELPHIA FED (Nov) (M): 11.6 / 11.5 LEADING INDICATORS M/M (Oct) (M): 0.4% / 1.0%

By noreply@noemail.com (HGH Press)