Day Traders Diary

6/13/12

It was a volatile day in the market today. All indices opened up lower, rallied mid-day to get in to positive territory, crashed coming into the close, then gave a last ditch effort upward, but not enough to close positive. The Dow closed down 77.42 points, the S&P down 9.30 points, and the Nasdaq down 24.46 points. Coming into the close the Dow dropped down 118 points, before rallying 41 points in the last ten minutes. The open was negative due to the Commerce Department reporting retail sales fell 0.2% in May, largely because Americans spent less on gas. Furthermore, the Labor Department reported wholesale prices declined 1% in May, with the steepest drop since July 2009 coming on lower energy costs. However, the market saw its mid-day rally happen while JP Morgan Chase's CEO, Jamie Dimon, talked to Congress about the company's $2 billion trading loss. Dimon handled himself well while being under fire from some of the senators, such as NJ Senator Menendez. Dimon sincerely apologized, took full responsibility and provided some reassurance that this wouldn't happen again, which is what many people were looking for him to do. The market held its gains for only a short time before losing it. What drove the market down off the gains was news released that Egan Jones downgraded Spain, from B to CCC+. "As we expected, Spain requested support for its banking sector and will probably need cash for weaker provinces," the ratings agency said in a note. "Assets of Spain's largest two banks exceed its GDP." Hurting the market more was another press release with Fed Chairman, Alan Greenspan. Greenspan said that the Euro was a noble but failed currency. "The only way to have several currencies from divergent nations lumped together is if they are culturally close, such as Germany, the Netherlands and Austria. If they aren't, it simply can't continue to work." Today the market saw some volatility; we will see if it continues into tomorrow, or if we have a definitive up/down day.

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