Market Summary
from Briefing.comEquities began the Black Friday session with investors paying more attention to the oil pits than mall parking lots as black gold was taking a beating. This morning, crude oil was trading near $69.00/bbl after yesterday's OPEC decision to maintain output at 30 million barrels per day. That represented a 6.0% loss, which led to comparable weakness in the energy sector.
Despite the plunge in energy, the market was able to recover with help from health care (+0.6%), technology (+0.5%), and the two consumer sectors (discretionary +1.2%; staples +1.3%), both of which benefited from strength among retailers. Dow component Wal-Mart (WMT 87.54, +2.56) spiked 3.0% after more than 22 million customers visited Wal-Mart stores on Thursday, suggesting a strong start to the holiday shopping season. The broader SPDR S&P Retail ETF (XRT 94.31, +0.84) advanced 0.9%.
However, as the session neared the end, the focus shifted to the oil pits once again where crude dropped below yesterday's low to $67.28/bbl, representing an 8.7% decline.
In turn, the slide in crude pressured the energy sector, and the broader market, to a fresh low for the day. Major sector components took a beating with BP (BP 39.32, -2.27), Chevron (CVX 108.87, -6.24), ExxonMobil (XOM 90.54, -3.94), and Halliburton (HAL 42.20, -5.14) sinking between 4.2% and 10.9%.
Elsewhere, the materials sector (-2.3%) could not escape the overall weakness among commodities. Copper tumbled 3.7% to $2.847/lb while gold fell 2.5% to $1.167.80/ozt. Last, but not least, silver cratered 7.0% to $15.44/ozt. Miners and steelmakers felt the weight with Market Vectors Steel ETF (SLX 39.50, -1.42) and Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF (GDX 18.36, -1.74) plunging 3.5% and 8.7%, respectively.
Making matters worse for commodities was the strengthening dollar, evidenced by a 0.5% advance in the Dollar Index (88.41, +0.39).
The commodity weakness also pressured some components of the industrial sector (-0.8%) like Caterpillar (CAT 100.60, -5.19), which fell 4.9%. However, the sector was able to avoid larger losses thanks to a flat finish from the Dow Jones Transportation Average. Still, the bellwether surrendered its intraday gain after a tug-of-war between railroad stocks and airlines. Rail carriers, who benefit from higher oil prices, tumbled with CSX (CSX 36.49, -1.42), Norfolk Southern (NSC 111.67, -5.53), and Union Pacific (UNP 116.81, -6.00) falling between 3.8% and 4.9%. In turn, air carriers like Delta Air Lines (DAL 46.67, +2.43) and United Continental (UAL 61.23, +4.63) cheered lower fuel prices, soaring higher by 5.5% and 8.2%, respectively.
When the dust settled, the major outage in the energy sector proved too much for the stock market to overcome. Furthermore, the inability of the sector to recover even a small portion of its losses, led to profit taking from areas that displayed strength. For instance, the iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF (IBB 303.90, +0.03) ended flat after being up near 1.0% at the start. Meanwhile, small caps made new lows into the afternoon with the Russell 2000 ending lower by 1.5%.
Treasuries benefited from the sloppy equity session with the 10-yr yield sliding five basis points to 2.18%.
Participation was relatively heavy considering the abbreviated session. More than 635 million shares changed hands at the NYSE floor.
Technical Update
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