Day Traders Diary

12/28/16

 The stock market spent the entire midweek session in a daylong retreat, which sent the S&P 500 lower by 0.8%. The benchmark index settled behind the Nasdaq Composite (-0.9%) and the Russell 2000 (-1.1%).

Once again, today's trading volume was below average with just 735 million shares changing hands at the NYSE floor.

Stocks slipped out of the gate and continued showing modest losses throughout the morning. With little upward pressure on the market, the losses were extended in afternoon action as just about every sector slid to fresh session lows. Growth-sensitive energy (-1.0%), materials (-1.0%), and financials (-1.0%) settled at the bottom of the leaderboard with energy slumping despite an intraday gain in crude oil. The energy component settled higher by 0.2% at $54.01/bbl after being up 0.9% in early afternoon action.

Most of the remaining cyclical sectors finished with comparable losses. The technology sector (-0.9%) ended just behind the broader market while chipmakers lagged. The PHLX Semiconductor Index fell 1.9% with NVIDIA (NVDA 109.25, -8.07) diving 6.9% to erase yesterday's surge. The stock faced selling pressure throughout the day after an analyst note cautioned that the stock may have a tough time following this year's performance. Shares of NVIDIA have nearly tripled since the end of last year.

Company-specific news was scarce today, but the Wall StreetJournal reported that Kate Spade (KATE 17.86, +3.35) is exploring a sale. Shares of KATE spiked 23.1% into the neighborhood of highs from November. The news had a limited impact on retailers as the SPDR S&P Retail ETF (XRT 44.37, -0.54) lost 1.2%.

Treasuries ended at their best levels of the day after climbing into the afternoon. The 10-yr yield fell five basis points to 2.51%.

Tomorrow, weekly Initial Claims (Briefing.com consensus 263K) and November International Trade in Goods will be reported at 8:30 ET.

Russell 2000 +19.9% YTD

Dow Jones Industrial Average +13.8% YTD

S&P 500 +10.1% YTD

Nasdaq Composite +8.6% YTD