Morning Market Report

Markets continued their drive upwards yesterday. The S&P index crossed over 1000 yesterday. The NASDAQ moved above 2000 and the Dow moved above 9200. Indices are down this morning. There is breaking economic data. Consumer spending was up .4% (inflation adjusted .1%) while income fell 1.3% in June. The data is out just in the last ten minutes and so it's difficult to guage just what effect it will have on the markets. Pending home sales for June will be out at 9 AM Central time. The consensus has .6% gain.

Pepsi has announced that they will be buying two of their bottling companies. Meanwhile, markets in the Far East were very mixed. The Hang Seng in China was down .05%, the NIKKEI in Japan was up .22% and the Straits Time Index in Singapore was down 1.23%. In Europe, all major indices were down. The FTSE in London was down 1.04%, the DAX in German was down .73%, and the Spanish index was down .9%.

Meanwhile, U.S. Treasury bonds gave back most of their gains from Friday and then some in some cases. The Ten year U.S. Treasury Bond finished at 3.63% up about 14 basis points. (14/100 of a percent) It's fallen below 3.6% in the trading this morning. This follows near universal drops in rates in world major bonds. Between the British and German debt, all but the 30 year in Britain saw their rates drop. We'll see if the U.S. Treasury bond follows suit. Currently, the yield spread between the 2 year and 10 year is just under 2.44% which continues to be the smallest spread in months. It reached a record spread of 2.75% in June. The yield spread measures the likelihood of future inflation.

Oil continues its brisk climb up. It's now trading at $71.23 per barrel after crossing over $70 a barrel just yesterday. The Dollar was mixed this morning. It's down .09% against the British Pound, it's up .08% against the Euro, and it's down .51% against the Yen.

Finally, Archer Daniels Midland has announced earnings in earnings fell 83% in the quarter and European bank UBS faced $1.3 billion in losses as that bank faced a mini run on deposits.