Market Roundup: Stocks, Spanish Yields Rise

Today was another exciting day in the markets, with major equity indices gaining more than 1% across the board and commodities following suit. The S&P 500 SPY gained 15.25 points to close at 1,324.18, 1.31% higher, while the tech-heavy NASDAQ QQQ closed 1.19% higher at 2,843.07. Industrials and financials were notable outperformers today, with industrials XLI gaining 1.57% and financials XLF gaining 1.59%.

Investors were focused on Spanish bonds this morning, as the 10-year yield hit its highest level since the inception of the euro currency. A large portion of this spike was due to the Fitch downgrade of Spanish banks. The EUR/USD cross rate dipped on the news but regained ground throughout the day to close just about where it started the day at 1.2503. The Yen was notably weak today, trading lower against the US dollar, euro and Great Britain pound

Gold and silver both climbed about 1% today on increased hopes of more Federal Reserve easing next week. WTI crude USO rose 0.71% today to $83.29 per barrel while Brent crude prices fell 0.74% to $97.27 per barrel. Natural gas futures UNG also fell today, closing down 0.27% at $2.212 per MMBtu.

The other headlines that moved the market today were:

• US import prices fell less than expected, down 0.3% year-over-year vs. an estimate of a decrease of 0.6%.


• The ECB sees the potential for a further 15% downside in the Spanish property market.


• Spanish and Italian bonds continued to sell off, with the Spanish ten-year touching 6.85% and the Italian touching 6.3%.


• The World Bank reiterated its forecast for global growth in 2012 at 2.5%.


• Germany's Schauble shuts the door on Eurobonds, citing that they would create bad incentives.

Today's trading session was pretty quiet, even with all of the aforementioned headlines. Stay tuned for more tommorow.