US stocks continued to dribble downward today for the 5th down day out of the last 7 trading days with the major indexes. After the regular market closed, news that the Federal Reserve plans to test six US banks for Europe Stress and futures turned down immediately.
Goldman Sachs [GS], Morgan Stanley [MS], Bank of America [BAC], Citigroup [C], JP Morgan [JPM], and Wells Fargo [WFC] are the largest US banks and this stress test will add an overhanging shadow of worry over the market. It is just more fear piling on existing fear and the downtrend is clearly established in this last rebound that started October 4th.
So we are seeing the over-reaction of the markets on the upside to over 12,200 on the Dow30 to now what may be an over-reaction on the downside.
The Dow30 was down 0.46%, Nasdaq Composite had virtually no change, the S&P 500 was down 0.41%, and the Russell 2000 was down 0.8%. The CBOE Volatility Index which is a gauge used to measure fear in the market place was down 2.8%.
In economic news, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew 2% which was less than the 2.5% expected.
In earnings news, CPB, Campbell Soup was down 5.2% Tuesday despite reporting earnings that were better than expected and maintained the same forecast for the fiscal year. HPQ, Hewlett-Packard was down 0.7% after reporting weaker than expected earnings.
NFLX, Netflix was down 5.4% Tuesday after warning of a loss for 2012. They also received downgrades from at least four brokerages.
Several key economic reports are scheduled for Wednesday due to the shortened holiday week, most notably Jobless Claims which are scheduled to be released at 8:30am Eastern before the market opens.
Volume was light with the Thanksgiving holiday coming up with 3.9 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange which is below the recent 4.7 billion average.
Remember the market is closed on Thursday, November 24th, in observance of Thanksgiving and closes early (1:00pm Eastern) on Friday.