A long Presidents Day weekend hasn’t cooled market indexes — we’re picking up roughly where we left off, if not even on a stronger trajectory. The past two weeks turned in positive results, albeit more tepidly as of last Friday. But this morning, we’re looking at the Dow up 130 points, the Nasdaq +50 and the S&P 500 up 13 points.
Part of it has to do with the fresh reality of a major winter storm stretching over the entire middle of the country, from Texas to the Ohio Valley. Here in Chicago, a couple feet of snow dropped — adding to the snowfall we’d already gotten and more on the way — but we’re prepared to deal with such things. Down in places like San Antonio, with power outages and without things like salt trucks, we may be seeing an even more severe event. As many as four million Americans are currently without power.
Energy prices are up this morning, partly as a result of this fresh storm. Natural Gas prices are rallying, and Oil is up — continuing its gains off last-spring lows at the height of the “shelter in place” period of the pandemic. Nowadays, with vaccinations accelerating — with a new estimate that the goal of 100 million vaccinations in the first 100 days of the Biden Administration within sight — we’d seen more Americans venturing out into the world. This huge blanket of snow is going to put a damper on this for the time being.
A new Empire State manufacturing index report has been released this morning for the month of February, with results doubling expectations: 12.1 was well ahead of the 5.9 expected, the highest monthly level since September, and the eighth straight up-month after March to May 2020 down — with April setting an all-time low -78.2. This is also more than 4x better than January’s read of 3.5.
New orders ramped up 10.8 from 6.6, with inventories snapping back into positive territory from the previous month. Input prices posted their fastest monthly gain in nearly 10 years: 57.8 versus 45.5. Selling prices also gained notably: 23.4 versus 15.2. Even with the state of New York having been hit among the hardest over the era of the pandemic thus far, the Empire State has managed to show some resiliency in its manufacturing businesses for more than half a year now.
Image: Bigstock
Wall Street Starts a Fresh Week at Record Highs
A long Presidents Day weekend hasn’t cooled market indexes — we’re picking up roughly where we left off, if not even on a stronger trajectory. The past two weeks turned in positive results, albeit more tepidly as of last Friday. But this morning, we’re looking at the Dow up 130 points, the Nasdaq +50 and the S&P 500 up 13 points.
Part of it has to do with the fresh reality of a major winter storm stretching over the entire middle of the country, from Texas to the Ohio Valley. Here in Chicago, a couple feet of snow dropped — adding to the snowfall we’d already gotten and more on the way — but we’re prepared to deal with such things. Down in places like San Antonio, with power outages and without things like salt trucks, we may be seeing an even more severe event. As many as four million Americans are currently without power.
Energy prices are up this morning, partly as a result of this fresh storm. Natural Gas prices are rallying, and Oil is up — continuing its gains off last-spring lows at the height of the “shelter in place” period of the pandemic. Nowadays, with vaccinations accelerating — with a new estimate that the goal of 100 million vaccinations in the first 100 days of the Biden Administration within sight — we’d seen more Americans venturing out into the world. This huge blanket of snow is going to put a damper on this for the time being.
A new Empire State manufacturing index report has been released this morning for the month of February, with results doubling expectations: 12.1 was well ahead of the 5.9 expected, the highest monthly level since September, and the eighth straight up-month after March to May 2020 down — with April setting an all-time low -78.2. This is also more than 4x better than January’s read of 3.5.
New orders ramped up 10.8 from 6.6, with inventories snapping back into positive territory from the previous month. Input prices posted their fastest monthly gain in nearly 10 years: 57.8 versus 45.5. Selling prices also gained notably: 23.4 versus 15.2. Even with the state of New York having been hit among the hardest over the era of the pandemic thus far, the Empire State has managed to show some resiliency in its manufacturing businesses for more than half a year now.