Friday’s Market Recap: Stocks End Mixed On Automaker Bailout

Markets retreated from their early morning highs to mixed territory.  The Dow Jones (^DJI) closed down -25.88, or -0.30%, to end the day at 8,579.11.  The Nadsaq (^IXIC) and S&P 500 (^GSPC) managed to finish slightly in positive territory by 0.29% and 0.77%, to close at 887.88 and 1,564.32 respectively.  That markets made their early gains on word of $17.4B automotive industry bailout.  General Motors (GM) seems to be the company that is going to benefit the most from the government intervention, but many analysts are worried that this is a scenario of throwing a lot of good money at bad.  Only time will tell, but most Americans are also equally un-optimistic about the newly announce bailout plan.

In other markets news, the U.S. dollar continued its two day recovery against the world’s other major currencies.  The dollar closed at 0.7203 against the Euro gaining 2.71% on the day.  The dollar was also able to gain against the Yen and British Pound by 0.09% and 1.08%, closing at 89.46 and 0.6729 respectively.  The dollar was beaten up this week as the U.S. Federal Reserve dropped the Federal Funds Rate to an-all time historic low of a 0.00% to 0.25% target range.  The actually Federal Funds Rate had been floating in this range for some time but now the official target is this area.  This move will probably not bring any sweeping changes as it was hypothetically already in effect before the move was made on Tuesday.

Energy stocks were the real laggards in the index today as the January contracts for crude oil are set to expire.  The price on these contracts during intra-day trading dropped as low as $35 but the new front month contracts, the Febuary contracts, are trading close to $42.50 dollars a barrel.  Exxon Mobil (XOM) took it on the chin today as it heavily lagged the energy index even though it was only the second worst performer.  Chevron (CVX) also experienced a move to the downside on no real news.

Disclosure: The author, the author’s family, and the mutual fund that the author manages are all long XOM.

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