Trade Deficit Deepens, Stocks Slump, Oil Spikes

  • December 11, 2008
  • David Goodboy

Stocks slumped across the board on the deepening trade deficit, increasing unemployment and further woes from the automakers rescue plan. Oil spiked on a falling dollar and a promise from the Saudis to cut production. The DJIA gave back -196.33 to 8565.09, the tech heavy Nasdaq fell -57.60 to 1507.88 and the wide reaching S&P 500 dropped -25.65 to 873.59.

Capital One
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Diodes Inc
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Palm
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Urban Outfitters
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PowerRating) – The hip clothing retailer fell 20.57% or $3.88 to $14.98/share upon announcing that it expects weaker holiday sales.

Oil climbed $4.46 to $47.40, gold added $17.80 to $826.60 and the fear index VIX climbed 0.09% to 55.78.

Market Snapshot

Dow

 -196.33 8565.09

NASDAQ

 -57.60 1507.88

S&P 500

 -25.65 873.59

Economic
News

Pending Home Sales (Oct): Consensus -2.3%, Prior -4.6%

Wholesales Inventories (Oct): Consensus 0.2%, Prior -0.1%

Crude Inventories (Dec 06): Consensus NA, Prior NA

Treasury Budget (Nov): Consensus -$193.0B, Prior NA

Export Prices ex-ag (Nov): Consensus NA, Prior -1.2%

Import Prices ex-oil (Nov): Consensus NA, Prior -0.9%

Initial Claims (Dec 06): Consensus NA, Prior NA

Trade Balance (Oct): Consensus -$54.0B, Prior -$56.5B

Core PPI (Nov): Consensus 0.2%, Prior 0.4%

PPI (Nov): Consensus -1.8%, Prior -2.8%

Retail Sales (Nov): Consensus -1.4%, Prior -2.8%

Retail Sales ex-auto (Nov): Consensus -1.7%, Prior -2.2%

Business Inventories (Oct): Consensus -0.1%, Prior -0.2%

Mich Sentiment-Prel. (Dec): Consensus 58.0, Prior 55.3

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