Closing commentary
Markets relatively subdued today with less volatile trade throughout though a fairly strong sell-off in the Oil Patch. Natural Gas sold off better than 14% on the day on big money flows as the fundamentals kicked in; massive amounts of natural gas in storage and a slightly smaller threat of a devastating hurricane over much of the Gulf of Mexico. Crude Oil and products sold off as well with the former losing 89 cents, Unleaded down 10.5cent and Heating oil losing 3.63cents on the day. The dollar remained bid vs JPY ending the day up 57 pips with some notion intrepid carry traders might be testing the waters again as the chance of a BOJ rate increase this week waned. USD lost a bit of ground against the EURO, a move that is likely to pick up steam when the dollar loses it’s safe haven bid. CABLE was also higher today but still trading nearly 6 handles below recent highs. The USD Index, heavily weighted toward the EURO, lost about 30 ticks on the day.
Gold and Silver ended the day narrowly mixed with Gold up a buck, silver off 3.5 cents. Platinum gained better than $15 and Copper was up 3.5 cents.
U.S. Tsy futures closed in positive territory despite the equity market recovery with the 30 year up 9 ticks, 10 year up 5, 5yr up 3 and the 2yr up 2 ticks on the day. Fed Funds traded from 5 to 5 1/4 but are under pressure, last bid/ask at 4.75 at 5.00, offered 25bps below the target rate.
Equity markets were mixed in an afternoon comeback with the Dow ending up in positive territory at 13,121.35, the SPX down .39 while the broad market VIX volatility index was down 3.66 at 26.33 and the VNX, volatility of the NDX, was off by 1.84 at 25.20. Much of today’s equity market trade looked alot more like consolidation and short term (day) position taking, not real money flows yet.