Xmas Eve’s 1/2 Day Of Trading Uneventful On 1st Day Of The Santa Claus Rally (Gold & Silver Jump)

Today’s trading session, which ended early at 10 am pacific in observance of the Xmas eve holiday, could have gone on without happening as it was fairly uneventful for the most part. Indeed nothing of dire significance outside of a hint of North Korean missile testing story surfaced. Quite a bit different from a year ago when the market crashed yet again on Dec. 24th and skyrocketing our investment in the TVIX that day which shot up ~+29%.  In contrast today, the “fear gauge” Vix (TVIX) ended today at $50.30/share at the close of trading down -1.62% and the markets were pretty much left alone today from recent record highs. Gold and Silver did jump a bit so keep an eye on that. (see that our Materials and Natural Resources section below.)

The S&P 500 ended the day off -.02% at 3223.38, the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended down -.13% ending at 28,515.45. The Nasdaq was up +.08% and is getting dangerously close to the 9k level closing at 8,952.88. The Russell 2000 moved higher +.23% at the close of trading now at 1,678.01.

The 2019-20 Santa Claus rally runs from today until Friday, Jan. 3. The last 5 trading days of the year & the first 2 trading days of the new year.

Economic Reports

On Monday,  total durable goods dropped by -2% in November below the 1.5% expected rate. However, new home sales in November surprisingly rose +1.3% month/month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 719k units while on a year/year basis new home sales are now up +16.9%. The median new-home price jumped +7.2% to $330,800 in November.

On Tuesday, we did not receive anything of significance and Wednesday we will not either

Investing & Inspiration

“No profession requires more hard work, intelligence, patience, and mental discipline than successful speculation.” -Robert Rhea

Tomorrow

The US economic scheduled will not provide any points tomorrow on Christmas & the markets will be closed but it will be back to its regular time at 6:30 am pacific on Thursday, Dec. 26th so no real rest for the wicked this week.

We will also receive the weekly Initial and Continuing Claims report on Thursday, Dec. 26th.