Day Traders Diary

11/9/15

The stock market began the trading week on a cautious note as persistent global growth concerns weighed on investor sentiment. The S&P 500 surrendered 1.0% while the Dow and Nasdaq posted comparable losses.

Equities retreated through the first half of the Monday session and remained near their lows into the afternoon, which kept dip-buyers on the sidelines. The cautious posture in the market took place after the weekend featured the release of China's trade data, which showed a 10-yr high in the trade surplus, but exports fell 6.9% in October, representing the fourth consecutive monthly drop.

Nine sectors ended the day in negative territory with losses between 0.7% (consumer staples) and 1.5% (energy) while the utilities space climbed 0.3%. The rate-sensitive sector eked out a modest gain thanks to higher Treasury yields; however, intraday demand lifted the 10-yr note off its low as the session wore on. As a result, the 10-yr returned to its early-morning low with the 10-yr yield rising two basis points to 2.35%.

Generally speaking, today's retreat was broad based with cyclical sectors leading the decline. Heavily-weighted consumer discretionary (-1.3%) and financials (-1.2%) ended behind seven of the remaining eight groups with the financial sector trimming its November gain to 1.5%. As for the consumer discretionary sector, the group was weighed down by a 9.6% slide in Priceline (PCLN 1311.39, -138.51) after its below-consensus guidance overshadowed better than expected results.

Elsewhere among cyclical sectors, energy (-1.5%) represented an early pocket of strength, but the group retreated alongside the broader market while crude oil lost 1.0%, sliding to $43.87/bbl. The energy sector narrowed its November gain to 0.9%, masking a 13.2% surge in Apache (APA 53.94, +6.27) after Bloomberg reported that the company received and rejected an unsolicited $18-billion takeover offer.

Also of note, industrials (-0.8%) traded among the laggards into the afternoon, but the sector was lifted ahead of the broader market during the afternoon amid reports Canadian Pacific (CP 142.18, +7.87) is interested in Norfolk Southern (NSC 88.67, +8.80). Shares of NSC soared 11.0% while the Dow Jones Transportation Average narrowed its loss to 0.3% after being down more than 2.0%.

Today's participation was a bit ahead of average with more than 900 million shares changing hands at the NYSE floor.

Tomorrow, October Import/Export Prices will be reported at 8:30 ET while the September Wholesale Inventories report will cross the wires at 10:00 ET (Briefing.com consensus 0.1%).

Nasdaq Composite +7.6% YTD

S&P 500 +1.0% YTD

Dow Jones Industrial Average -0.5% YTD

Russell 2000 -1.5% YTD