Saturday 1 July 2017

Markets mixed, US stocks' hot streak at risk

Markets were mixed on Friday.

The S&P 500 rose 0.2 percent but the STOXX Europe 600 fell 0.3 percent and the MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell 0.7 percent.

Oil rose, with WTI crude jumping 2.9 percent.

Bonds fell. The yield on the US 10-year Treasury note rose three basis points to 2.30 percent.

The advance on Friday left the S&P 500 with a 2.6 percent gain for the second quarter.

Alex Rosenberg at CNBC noted that the second quarter was the S&P 500's 16th winning quarter out of the past 18.

He wrote that there have only been six prior four-and-a-half-year periods in which the S&P 500 rose in 16 quarters or more, and all of them came in the periods that ended between the fourth quarter of 1998 and the first quarter of 2000.

“That is to say, the S&P 500 hasn't performed this dependably since the dotcom bubble,” he said.

However, the streak may be about to end.

“The S&P is and has been overbought for a long while. It should slump,” he quoted Max Wolff of 55 Institutional as saying in an email on Thursday.

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