A very interesting day...

Stocks opened strong and continued their advances throughout the first two hours of the day. The major averages topped out at a plus of over 2 % before the settled into a narrow sideways range while awaiting the results of the FED meeting.

By 2.15 ET the results were out and the market entered a highly volatile final 90 minutes which saw limited losses.

When everything was done the major markets closed around the midpoint of today's range. The one exception was the Dow which actually closed in negative territory.

The Dow lost 0.28 % and the broader based S&P managed to close + 0.65 %

After a couple of days with lackluster news flow we finally got something to talk about.

The very first news item was the release of the Durable Goods report for the month of May. Analysts were looking for a decline of 0.6 % but to almost everybodies surprise the number came in at + 1.8 %. Durable goods are notoriously volatile so the real test will come next month. Be it as it may...for the month of may longer lasting industrial goods were purchased at a stronger rate than anticipated...as such the news was good.

Since these longer lasting industrial goods covered under the report are more purchased by an industrial clientele the report does suggest that at least on the commercial side the world is not coming to an end.

Of course, the day was dominated by the release of the policy minutes of the FED meeting and the (NON) decision regarding interest rates.

Rates were, as was widely expected, left unchanged. The closely watched policy statement was also pretty much unchanged. To paraphrase...the worst is over, we are still ill but will get better slowly but surely.

As such there was really no real news associated with the conclusion of the FED meeting.

More interesting was perhaps the response of the market. All of the major indices were around their session highs right before the release of the minutes. Unfortunately though stocks turned south right after.

Looses were subdued (with the exception of the DOW which actually turned negative) but never the loss it clearly did not enthuse the market.

As I mentioned yesterday , there was really little the FED could have said that would get the stock market going.

The lackluster response to the market today does suggest to me that there is a good chance for additional losses.

The picture is a bit murky right now with the DOW actually loosing ground vis a vis the broader based averages but to me it just looks like we are not trading significantly higher anytime soon.

We will see what happens tomorrow.

Till then,

Steve Benger