Day Traders Diary

10/12/15

The stock market began the trading week on a sleepy note with a Monday session that saw the S&P 500 bounce around an eight-point range. The benchmark index settled higher by 0.1% while the Nasdaq Composite (+0.2%) outperformed slightly.

With the bond market closed for Columbus Day, a fair share of participants elected to forego the Monday session. The subdued activity was highlighted by below-average trading volume as fewer than 700 million shares changed hands at the NYSE floor.

Eight sectors finished the day with gains while commodity-sensitive energy (-1.1%) and materials (-0.9%) underperformed throughout the session. The energy sector finished at the bottom of the leaderboard, narrowing its October gain to 10.9% while crude oil surrendered 5.2% to settle at $47.19/bbl. Similar to the sector, WTI crude continues holding a solid month-to-date gain (+4.7%) despite today's dive.

Staying on the cyclical side, the consumer discretionary space (+0.5%) displayed relative strength since the start while the remaining growth-sensitive groups spent the day closer to their flat lines. Homebuilders contributed to the strength in the discretionary space with iShares Dow Jones US Home Construction ETF (ITB 27.94, +0.09) climbing 0.3%.

Elsewhere, the top-weighted technology sector (+0.2%) hovered just above its flat line throughout the day. Large sector components like Apple (AAPL 111.58, -0.54), Microsoft (MSFT 47.00, -0.11), Alphabet (GOOGL 676.43, +5.19), and Facebook (FB 94.26, +1.02) traded in mixed fashion while EMC (EMC 28.35, +0.49) spiked 1.8% after agreeing to be acquired by Dell for $67 billion in cash and stock.

Moving to the countercyclical side, consumer staples (+0.2%) and utilities (+0.9%) held gains throughout the day while the health care sector (+0.2%) eked out a slim advance despite a 7.8% slide in the shares of Eli Lilly (LLY 79.44, -6.70) after the company halted the development of a cholesterol drug.

Investors did not receive any economic data today, but tomorrow, the Treasury Budget for September will be reported at 14:00 ET (Briefing.com consensus $95.00 billion).

Nasdaq Composite +2.2% YTD

S&P 500 -2.0% YTD

Dow Jones Industrial Average -3.9% YTD

Russell 2000 -3.4% YTD