Autos Surprise, Savings Sink Stocks, Market Mixed

Positive economic news hit stocks with a double whammy today. Soaring spending, climbing incomes and a surprise increase in auto sales worked to push stocks higher. However, an increase in the savings rate acted to mute the advance as forward thinking investors worried about the dead money sitting in savings accounts instead of adding stimulus to the economy. Stocks ended the day mixed with the DJIA off by -34.01 to 8438.39, the Nasdaq eased ahead by +8.68 to 1838.22 and the broad based S&P 500 slipped back -1.36 to 918.90.

Jazz Pharmaceuticals
(
JAZZ |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
– Was downgraded to “underweight” by Barclays sending shares lower by 13.39% or 60 cents to $3.88.

Immucor
(
BLUD |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
– The FDA moved to revoke the company’s license causing shares to fall 14.23% or $2.29 to $13.80/share.

Navistar
(
NAV |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
– Wachovia upgraded the company to outperform however shares retreated 3.89% or $1.83 to $45.20.

Illinois Tool Works
(
ITW |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
– Another Wachovia upgrade to outperform sending shares higher by 2.63% or 96 cents to $37.45.

Oil fell 1.07 cents to $69.34, gold added $1.50 to $941.00 and the VIX fear index fell another 1.63% to 25.93.

According to a recent report, eight out of ten securities traded are exchange-traded funds. Want to learn how to trade them? Click here to pre-order High Probability ETF Trading, the first quantified book of trading strategies to improve your ETF trading.

Market Snapshot

Dow

-34.01 8438.39

NASDAQ

+8.68 1838.22

S&P 500

-1.36 918.90

Economic
News

Existing Home Sales (May): Consensus: 4.83M, Prior: 4.68M

Durable Orders (May): Consensus: -0.9%, Prior: 1.9%

Durable Orders, Ex-Transportation (May): Consensus: -0.5%, Prior: 0.8%

New Home Sales (May): Consensus: 360K, Prior: 352K

Crude Inventories (06/19): Consensus: NA, Prior: -3.87M

FOMC Rate Decision: Consensus: NA, Prior: NA

Initial Claims (06/20): Consensus: 608K, Prior: 608K

Q1 GDP – Final (Q1): Consensus: -5.7%, Prior: -5.7%

Personal Income (May): Consensus: 0.2%, Prior: 0.5%

Personal Spending (May): Consensus: 0.4%, Prior: -0.1%

PCE Core (May): Consensus: 0.2%, Prior: 0.3%

Mich Sentiment-Rev (Jun): Consensus: 69.0, Prior: 69.0