Morning Market Report

After eight straight days of being up, the three indices took a negative turn for the last two days, and they are signaling down this morning. The S&P and the NASDAQ were up the last six months in a row while the Dow has been up for five of the last six months. So, it's not yet time to call it a trend.

There's going to be all sorts of economic data this morning. U.S. automakers will release their August sales number. The Institute of Supply Management will release its August manufacturing numbers. The consensus will put that number above 50 for the first time since January of 2008. Any number above means that the manufacturing industry is expanding. Meanwhile, construction spending numbers will also come out later this morning. The consensus has a gain of 1.5%. Finally, the most important number will come out at the end of the week, when August employment numbers come out. The consensus has the economy losing 228,000. While I don't remember when the consensus has been accurate, it's a guage for the markets.

Meanwhile, oil is now trading below $70 a barrel. It's at $69.71 a barrel. That marks an important milestone. Treasury bonds are slightly worse this morning but that's after having another great day yesterday. The ten year U.S. Treasury is now trading at 3.41% up about 1.5 basis points but still marking near lows on the rate over the last four plus weeks. It reached 3.39% in the month of August and it reach there yesterday as well, and that's the low on the rate for the last month plus.

Markets in the Far East and Europe were reversed of each other. Markets bounced back across the board in the Far East while they continued their downward spiral in Europe. You'll remember that the broadest Chinese index was down nearly 7% on Monday. Well, all indices were up today though not nearly matching losses on Monday. The Hang Seng in China was up .75%, the NIKKEI in Japan was up .36%, and the Straits Time Index was up .13%. The broader Chinese index was up .6%. In Europe, the FTSE in London was down .92%, the Dax in Germany was down .93%, and the Spanish Index was down 1.12%.

Finally, so far it's relatively quiet in currencies. The Dollar is up .1% against the Euro, it's up .39% against the British Pound and it's up .02% against the Japanese Yen.