April 29th 2014 – Dow Closes in on Record High

Market View:

Perhaps the market is tiring of news from Ukraine and has priced in the worst in term of how the sanctions will affect the world economy.  Today was a very positive day and seems to me to be pointing to a new trend in the Nasdaq which has been trending down for almost 8 weeks.  Numbers from retailer Coach were less than impressive, so it remains to be seen if retail and tech stocks can gain some foothold in the coming weeks, but signs for me are positive from a technical standpoint.

Market News:

Stocks closed up today, with the Dow approaching a record high, as investors cheered a round of better-than-expected quarterly earnings from companies including Merck.

Twitter and Ebay are among major companies slated to post earnings after the closing bell. Shares of both companies were higher.

The Dow is less than 100 points from hitting its all-time high of 16,631.63.

The Federal Open Market Committee kicked off its two-day meeting in Washington. Policy makers are expected to announce a fourth cut in the Federal Reserve’s monthly bond purchases on Wednesday.

Investors largely shrugged off news from Ukraine. Earlier, the United States and European Union imposed more sanctions on Russia for its role in backing the separatist movement in eastern Ukraine.

On the economic front, consumer confidence came in just below expectations in April. Separately, the S&P Case-Shiller home price index was slightly better than expected in February.

And, while the April 82.3 read on consumer sentiment was slightly below the 83.2 estimate, it’s still the second best read since January ’08.

Wednesday:

Earnings: Time Warner, Daimler, GlaxoSmithKline, Thomson Reuters, Pitney Bowes, Royal Dutch Shell, Total, AllianceBernstein, Shutterfly,Weight Watchers, Yelp, JDS Uniphase, Tesoro, International Rectifier, Whiting Petroleum, Actavis, MetLife, Flextronics, Boston Beer, Automatic Data, Hess, Hyatt, International Paper, Embraer, Philips 66, Flextronics, Level 3, Southern Co, WellPoint Health, Wisconsin Energy

8:15 a.m.: ADP employment

8:30 a.m.: Q1 GDP (adv)

8:30 a.m.: Employment cost index (Q1)

9:45 a.m.: PMI

2:00 p.m.: Fed statement

News Sources:  CNBC and CNN Money