Sunday, January 09, 2005

Market Week in Review

S&P 500 1,186.19 -2.12%

Click here for the Weekly Wrap by Briefing.com.

Bottom Line: Market action last week was poor as the S&P 500 had its worst 5-day start to a year since 1991 on profit-taking, fears over slowing global growth and hawkish comments by the Fed. Weakness in small-caps, commodity-related stocks and tech shares was the most pronounced. Volume was relatively heavy and decliners swamped advancers on the week. Most of the major indices seemed to find support around their 50-day moving-averages. From an intermediate-term standpoint, the market still appears very healthy technically. On the positive side, the steepest declines were confined to the biggest winners of last year. As well, the CRB Index fell again, the US dollar posted a significant gain and long-term interest rates were stable. Measures of investor anxiety rose on the week, but remain below levels normally associated with solid bottoms. Walgreen(WAG+8.2%), American International Group(AIG+2.9%) and Wal-Mart(WMT+2.2%) were stand-out performers in the S&P 500.

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