Morning Market Report

Markets look to open higher. All three indices were up between a half a percent and a full percent yesterday. Markets are up this morning but much less than that even. The Dow is up less than six points currently. The other two indices, the S&P and NASDAQ, are up even less. Commodities are looking higher this morning as well.

Wall Street was poised for a slightly higher open as the shrinking dollar boosted commodity prices and a pharmaceutical company surged on promising new drug test results.

Of course, this is in large part due to a weaker Dollar and so I'm not sure that this is all positive. U.S. Treasury bonds have been having their rates move higher over the last couple days as well. The ten year is now at 3.49%. So, it's gained ten basis points in the last few days. The yield spread between the two and ten year is also inching up, and now it's at 2.55%.

Oil is a commodity and so it is moving up. It's now at $71.56 a barrel and it's gained nearly $7 a barrel in the last week and a half. Around the world, we had mirrors of each other in the Far East and Europe. Markets in the Far East were nearly unanimously down, while they were up across the board in Europe. The Hang Seng in China was down 1.04%, the NIKKEI in Japan was down .78%, and the Straits Time Index in Singapore was down .39%. The broad Chinese index was up .54% but it was in the minority in the Far East.

In Europe, as I said, markets were up across the board. The FTSE in London was up .82%, the DAX in Germany was up .93%, and the Spanish Index was up .72%.

In currencies, as I mentioned earlier, the Dollar is cratering. It's down .68% against the Euro, down .34% against the British Pound, and down .19% against the Japanese Yen.

Finally, mortgage applications were at a 3 month high last week. It was driven mostly by refinances and due to the drop in mortgage rates. As I mentioned earlier, rates have been inching up the last couple days so we'll see how that affects the trend.