Oil down, stocks down?
- Yes, it actually happened — we’ve been reading about how the inverse relationship between oil prices and stocks was breaking down, but it didn’t seem so in-your-face as it was on Wednesday. Oil finished below $105 a barrel, but stocks…well, they just laid there, finishing just on the red side of flat. Less true for tech stocks and small-caps which underperformed. This isn’t a complete coincidence — traders have spent much of the past few weeks sifting through small-cap (and usually Nasdaq-traded) names for energy, precious metals, and mining plays. With most hard commodities consolidating, that run to $200 oil doesn’t look like it’s happening next week, and the magic $8 stocks have lost some luster. Silver did rise on Wednesday, gold did not. Bonds, which had slipped to see the 10-year note’s yield close above 3.5% in three of the past four sessions, gained some ground to push the yield down to 3.47%.
- After the closing bell, more from the week that is tech storage: LSI Logic (NYSE:) agreed to sell its external storage systems business to NetApp (NASDAQ:) for $480 million; Human Genome (NASDAQ:) said the FDA approved its Benlysta lupus drug.
- On Thursday, the economic data flow brings you the weekly jobless claims, the January trade balance report and the January report on the Treasury budget. A few more C-list earnings reports will trickle out before and after the bell.
OUT THERE SOMEWHERE:
- The UN’s take on : kick business out of it.
- Libya’s central bank chief . In Turkey, of course.
- A case for speculators’ .
- A restaurant food delivery startup .
- Good question: How many do we really need?
- Motorola (NYSE:) shares showing investors don’t have much confidence in tablet PCs.
- 5 worth knowing.
- as economic proxy.
- Job recovery at last! Well, not in , really.
- Optimism on the .
