Day Traders Diary

12/28/15

The major averages have climbed off their session lows, but they remain in the bottom half of their trading ranges. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (-0.4%) trades a bit ahead of the S&P 500 (-0.5%) and the Nasdaq (-0.6%).

The stock market opened lower following weak economic data from overseas that returned global demand concerns to the forefront. As a result, oil retreated throughout the night, continuing its slide into the trading day. Overnight, China released its November industrial profits report, which showed a 1.4% year-over-year decrease, representing the sixth straight monthly decline. Following this news and subsequent reaction, WTI crude slid overnight from the $38.00/bbl price level and is currently trading down 3.4% today at $36.79/bbl.

Moving to sectors, energy (-2.0%) leads to the downside followed by materials (-0.9%), financials (-0.6%) and health care (-0.6%). On the flipside, the telecommunication services sector (UNCH) sits on the top of the leaderboard followed by utilities (UNCH), consumer discretionary (-0.2%), and consumer staples (-0.3%).

In energy, pipeline and equipment companies have been hit the hardest with Kinder Morgan (KMI 15.31, -0.78) sliding despite a spike in natural gas. Natural gas has risen 7.8% today to $2.23/mmbtu. For its part, Dow component Chevron (CVX 90.26, -1.79) trades in-line with the sector, down 2.0% on the day.

Switching to the consumer discretionary space, today's broader market outperformance is owed primarily to two large cap constituents: Amazon (AMZN 668.50, +5.71) and Disney (DIS 106.87, +1.01). Amazon is reacting to better than expected holiday numbers that showed that more than three million members joined Prime in the third week of December alone. The company also posted stronger numbers on their line of tablets and video-on-demand services. Meanwhile, Disney, reported that Star Wars: the Force Awakens has become the fastest movie to surpass $1 billion in worldwide box office sales. The companies are both up 1.0% on the day.

In Treasuries, the benchmark note has spent the better part of the day trading near its high with yield currently lower by one basis point at 2.23%.

Investors did not receive any economic data of note today.