It’s quiet out there. TOO quiet, some might say.
Equities are mostly flat after a selloff yesterday, as is crude oil. Gold and silver are mixed, though the former is making a run at new all-time highs after closing well above $2,000 an ounce.
Treasuries and the dollar are – you guessed it – flat.
On the news front...
President Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts in New York City yesterday, all related to the falsification of business records. He won’t face trial until January 2024 at the earliest.
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) is proposing a $8.9 billion settlement for lawsuits related to its talc powder operations. Tens of thousands of claims have been filed against the consumer products and pharmaceutical giant alleging talc exposure helped cause ovarian cancer.
Walmart (WMT) plans to let more than 2,000 workers go in Texas, Pennsylvania, Florida, and New Jersey. The cuts will impact workers at warehouses that fulfill online orders.
In Hamlet, Polonious told his son Laertes: “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” If Laertes was heading off to work on Wall Street, his best advice would’ve been: “Neither a Cassandra nor a Pollyanna be,” according to Bloomberg.
Why? Because rather than crash or soar (as extreme bears and bulls have been predicting), the S&P 500 has essentially flopped and chopped around the 4,000 level for 11 months. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) is trading around $408 – a level it has seen many, many times as you can see here.
SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY)
