Morning Market Report

It was announced that the trade gap narrowed yesterday in the morning and that helped push equities higher. All three equity indices were up between .25% and .75%. This morning the retail sales for November were up 1.3% from the same month last year. That's a relatively robust number and it indicates a good retail sales number for this particular holiday season. Retailer count on the Christmas season for about one in five of their overall sales. This number indicates that it should be improving. It's another sign that we're seeing a recovery. All equity indices are up about a half a percent in the pre market.



Meanwhile, bonds are shooting up. The ten year is up to 3.54%. It was at 3.32% not five trading days ago. Earlier in the week Moody's warned that our credit rating might get cut down the road. Initially, there was a shrug in bonds. In the last couple days, in conjunction with several new offerings, we've seen bonds shoot up. The yield spread between the two and ten year is now 2.64%. That's tightened a bit but still very large. The three month t bill has gotten better and is now on the edge of going negative again. It's sitting at .015%. Gold is sitting at $1135 this morning. That's up about $10 an ounce this morning. It's down some for the week. It's way down from a few weeks back when it crossed $1200 an ounce. Oil is relatively unchanged this morning but now is barely above $70 a barrel after having a miserable week. It's now at $70.61 a barrel.



It was a relatively good day in the Far East. The Hang Seng in China was up .93%, the NIKKEI in Japan was up 2.48%, and the broader Chinese index was down .21%. Equity markets are currently up across the board in Europe. The Dax in Germany is leading the way currently up just over one percent.