October 10/15/08
Navivest

It was another ugly day for stocks across the board that saw the S&P 500 sell off to the tune of 9.03%, the Dow shed 7.87% and the Nasdaq saw a loss of 8.47%.

On Monday 10/13/08 when the stock market saw that amazing rally on the EU and U.S. government plan to buy stakes in banks, the Dow opened at 8,462.42. With today’s close of 8,577.91, the Dow is now only a hundred and fifteen points above the open on Monday. So we’ve in effect just about lost all those gains.

The concern was the economy, both here in the U.S and abroad. We saw oil for November delivery lose $4.80 today to close at $73.83 as OPEC warned that demand is slowing. As a result, we saw energy and commodity stocks get battered. We also got a report that showed car sales in China slowed last month.

This morning, the Commerce Department released retail sales report for September that showed fell much worse than was forecasted. The actual drop was 1.2%, while economists had been looking for a drop of 0.7%. The drop in August was only 0.3%.

As things get worse, we can look for stocks to continue moving to the downside. However, we will probably see a very volatile stock market with wild swings in the near term. After today’s 700-point plus drop, we are now looking for a rebound over the next day or so and we are positioning subscribers to our Options Capitalist accordingly.

Tags: Stock Market  Dow Jones  Nasdaq  S&P 500