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“I ought to be jealous of the tower. She is more famous than I am.” – Gustave Eiffel
133 years ago today, the Eiffel Tower, one of the most iconic landmarks in the world today opened for business. It may sound hard to believe, but when the tower first opened a number of critics thought it would be an eyesore on the Paris landscape, and twenty years after it opened the Eiffel Tower was almost demolished when the lease on the land it stood on expired. The main reason it was spared was because of its utility as a radio antenna! More than 100 years later, the mere thought of Paris without the Eiffel tower would be considered a sacrilege. Just like in the stock market and everything else in life, one person’s (or generation’s) trash is another one’s treasure.
In markets this morning, investors want nothing to do with oil as WTI is trading down more than 5% on reports of a massive stockpile release from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). For more on this and how the SPR works, make sure to check out our explanation in today’s Morning Lineup. The weakness in futures has equity futures up modestly, but it’s the last day of the quarter, so expect to see a decent amount of volatility throughout the trading day.
In economic news, we just got a slug of economic data this morning, and there weren’t that many major outliers. Perhaps the biggest outlier was Personal Spending which rose 0.2% versus forecasts for an increase of 0.5%.
Read today’s Morning Lineup for a recap of all the major market news and events from around the world, including the latest US and international COVID trends.
There’s still a day left in the quarter, and despite the strong rally in the last couple of weeks, for the majority of stocks and sectors, it has been a quarter to forget. On a year-to-date basis, Energy is the clear leader with a gain of more than 40%, but over the last week, both Utilities and Financials have moved into positive territory for the year. At the other end of the spectrum, Communications Services, Consumer Discretionary, Technology, and Real Estate are all still looking at losses of more than 5%. Not great, but it could have been a lot worse were it not for the 3.5%+ gains in the last week.
While the vast majority of sectors are looking at YTD declines to close out Q1, they’re also trading at short-term overbought levels. All eleven sectors are currently above their 50-DMAs, and all but Financials and Communication Services are also ‘overbought’ (at least one standard deviation above their 50-DMA.
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