A freezing cold March 14 is in the books here on Wall Street. I'm afraid it's even cold here in the studio. Here's the "New York Minute."
Now, those traders who did get to their desks in Wall Street today were in a thoroughly bad mood. That might explain why stocks were off and why bond yields fell. Meanwhile, the big news for the day came in oil. As you can see, the oil price continued to fall. It's now below that 200-day moving average, which is a very important measure that maybe that long upward trend that you saw has finally been breached.
Why didn't that happen? Well, we had OPEC production numbers today. You can see they fell slightly, which should be good for the oil price, but the market was spooked by the news that Saudi Arabia had deliberately raised its production a little. If you want one obvious area that's hurt by this, take a look at the energy sector of the S&P 500-- very significantly underperforming again on this news about oil.
Meanwhile, if you want one area that's not put off either by the oil price or by the weather, this is the latest optimism number from the National Federation of Independent Business. Small business is still very excited by Donald Trump. And that's the "New York Minute."
