Shoring Up the Ship

Investors are hoping to shore up the ship before the long weekend, but stocks are mostly down globally again today, save Japan, which was so far off yesterday that it had to recover some ground. The SPDR S&P 500 (NYSE: SPY), SPDR Dow Jones (NYSE: DIA) and the PowerShares QQQ (Nasdaq: QQQ) are off 0.5% to 0.7% nearing 11:00 AM ET. Given all the data has been released today, I think it’s safe to say stocks will wait until next week before determining if this week’s slide was something with follow through or not. Investors will be deciding on whether capital inflows still deserve shifting into cyclical names given Fed tapering speculation. Perhaps we should be paying more attention to the economy, which is worse than most forecasters see in the U.S., is falling apart in Europe, is slowing in China and lives in desperation in Japan.

Economic Events

Durable Goods Orders were reported for the month of April this morning. This is a volatile measure and a difficult one for economists to peg because of the high ticket price of durable goods. For this reason, the data comes with and without the especially high-priced transportation segment data. For this month, durables orders rose 3.3%, against economists’ expectations for a rise of 1.1%, and after March’s decline of 5.9% (revised from 5.7%). Excluding transportation, though, durables rose 1.3% against expectations for just an inch up by 0.4%, and after falling 1.7% last month (revised from -1.4%).

Overseas Markets

EUROPE	10:20 AM	ASIA/PACIFIC	CLOSE
EURO STOXX 50	-0.8%	NIKKEI 225	+0.9%
German DAX	-1.0%	Hang Seng	-0.2%
CAC 40	-0.6%	S&P/ASX 200	-1.6%
FTSE 100	-0.8%	Korean KOSPI	+0.2%
Greek ASE	-0.3%	BSE India SENSEX	+0.1%

Commodity Markets (10:09 PM ET)

WTI Crude	-1.0%
Brent Crude	-0.6%
NYMEX Natural Gas	-0.7%
RBOB Gasoline	-0.8%
Gold Spot	-0.0%
Silver Spot	-0.5%
COMEX Copper	-0.6%
CBOT Corn	-0.6%
CBOT Wheat	-0.5%
CBOT Soybeans	-0.3%
ICE Cocoa	-1.4%
ICE Sugar	+0.6%
ICE Orange Juice Conc.	-1.1%
CME Live Cattle	+0.0%

Corporate Events

Sears (Nasdaq: SHLD) shares are off 16% after its first quarter loss widened and it announced that it would be seeking ways to shore up the ship.

Delta Airlines (NYSE: DAL) is up 0.8% as it opens up its JFK Terminal.

The corporate wire has meetings at Cerner (Nasdaq: CERN) and Telephone & Data Systems (NYSE: TDS). Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG) has a special conference call regarding a change in management. The earnings wire has news from Abercrombie & Fitch (NYSE: ANF), Destination XL Group (Nasdaq: DXLG), Hibbett Sports (Nasdaq: HIBB), Foot Locker (NYSE: FL), China Zenix Auto (NYSE: ZX), Natuzzi (NYSE: NTZ), Tsakos Energy Navigation (NYSE: TNP) and Ulstarcom (Nasdaq: UTSI).

The bond markets will close early today at 2:00 PM ET due to the Memorial Day holiday weekend.

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