Yesterday the Standard & Poor’s 500 hit its first new all-time high since early May as investors and traders bought into the reassurance from the Federal Reserve that the 5% year over year increase in the Consumer Price Index was merely a temporary jump in inflation.
Today, with the weekend immediately ahead and the June 16 meeting of the Fed’s interest-rate setting Open Market Committee looming on Wednesday, June 16, nobody wanted to get much further ahead of actual news from the central bank.
The S&P 500 closed up just 0.19% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average managed a 0.04% gain. The NASDAQ Composite moved higher by 0.35% by the finish and the NASDAQ 100 was ahead 0.29% as the BiG TECH socks that powered yesterday’s move faltered today. Apple (AAPL) was the big gainer for the day with a 0.98% move. Facebook (FB) fell 0.36%;; Amazon (AMZN) was off 0.08% and Alphabet (GOOG) slipped 0.30%.
The small cap Russell 2000 closed 0.97% high while the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM) lost 0.32%.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury picked up 2 basis points to 1.45% but remained below the closely watched 1.50% level.
And fear continued to take a vacation. The “fear index” the CBOE S&P 500 Volatility Index (VIX) slid 2.86% on the day to 15.64. The VIX peaked at 27.59 on May 12 and then again at 22.8 on May 19 before beginning a precipitous descent to current levels.
