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Pre-Market Predictions: Stocks and Futures Poised for Gains


Monday, February 7th, 2011
News

According to CNN Money, stocks are signaling early gains. The critical factor for the market today will be President Obama’s much anticipated speech at the Chamber of Commerce and the unveiling of the latest government data on consumer debt. The Dow Industrial Average, S&P 500, and Nasdaq futures are all higher ahead of the opening bell. These markets serve as indicators of the predicted values of future stock performance, and the data suggests Wall Street will open at a 30 year high.

Last Friday, the stock market made gains of only 2 percent due to the mixed reactions from the mixed data from the job report. According to the Financial Times, economists had projected 136,000 jobs to be created by the end of the month. In reality, only 36,000 were created. However most traders were quick to observe the effect of the January storms might have in skewing the data for this month as unemployment decreased from 9.4 percent to 9 percent.

In general, the market is trending upward. The Dow ended making 2.3 percent in gains, with the S&P 500 up 2.7 percent, and the Nasdaq up over 3 percent in the past five trading days. Last week, corporate earnings in the industrial and technology sectors spiked.

Economists such as Peter Cardillo, the chief market economists at Avalon Partners, suggests that the stock market has been particularly responsive to the improvement in the global economy and that signs of the debt crisis in Europe are overall reduced, have given encouraging signs. Despite German industrial orders being down in December, the copper market shows the broader economic climate across Europe. This commodity is considered a ‘bellwether’ of economic growth largely because of its use in industrial and construction use. Recently, copper hit a record high in London at $10,100 per tonne.

 



Article by Andrew Timm

The views expressed are the subjective opinion of the article's author and not of FinancialAdvisory.com



Tags: commerce , futures , markets , obama , stocks