Market Wrap For Thursday, December 26th: Volume Is Light During Market Height

As anticipated, volume was light and news was thin this boxing day. Regardless, indexes climbed to new highs.

Major Averages

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 122.33 points, or 0.75 percent, to close at 16,480.

The S&P 500 gained 8.7 points, or 0.47 percent, to 1,842.

The Nasdaq Composite rose 11.76 points, or 0.28 percent, to close at 4,167.

Top Headlines

UPS and Fedex saw unprecedented demand this week, and failed to deliver packages by Christmas for many customers. Amazon customers affected by the delay are rumored to get a 20 dollar credit for future purchases.

Initial jobless claims were better than expected at 338,000 while Wall Street expected 345,000. However, continuing claims were 3.2 percent worse than expected at 2.92 million.

Stock Movers

On Tuesday, BlackBerry BBRY co-founder Michael Lazaridis lowered his stake in the company to just below 5% versus 5.7%. BlackBerry posted a Q3 loss of $4.4 billion last week. Shares gave up 8.87 percent Thursday to close at $7.06.

Shares of Twitter TWTR got a boost, shooting up 4.79 percent to $73.31 on a volatile session after gaining for three trading days. Twitter shares surged to a new high today.

3D Systems DDD was also up, gaining 6.96 percent to $92.06, breaking the psychological $90 level as traders rushed into 3D printing names on Thursday's session.

DryShips DRYS was also up, gaining 12.71 percent to $4.70 as the whole sector showed continued strength from Tuesday's trading session.

Shares of Goodrich Petroleum GDP were down 5.09 percent to $16.42 following the news of plugging at Tuscaloosa Marine Shale.

Opko Health OPK tumbled 2.65 percent to $8.80. Opko Health shares have surged 93.16% over the past 52 weeks.
Textura Corporation TXTR shares were down as well, falling 17.06 percent to $31.30 after Citron Research issued a scathing report on the company midway through the morning Thursday.

Commodities

Crude oil made a small move up today. At last check, NYMEX crude rose 0.38 percent to $99.60 while Brent contracts gained 0.05 percent to $111.96. Natural gas was up two cents at last check to $4.43.

Precious metals made a stronger move higher, staying above the key $1,200 level. Nearing the close of equities, COMEX gold futures had risen 0.65 percent to $1,211.10 and silver futures were up 1.6 percent to $19.80.

Volatility and Volume

The VIX looks like the graph of negative x squared. Heading into the close, the volatility index was down more than two percent to 12.21.

As noted above, volume was miniscule today. Roughly 50 million shares of the S&P 500 ETF SPY traded hands, compared to the three month average of 113 million.

Currencies
The PowerShares DB US Dollar Index Bullish ETF UUP, which tracks the performance of the greenback versus a basket of foreign currencies, was flat today at 21.64 after yesterday’s small gain.

The closely watched EUR/USD pair was last trading up 0.1 percent to $1.3694. The other notable mover of the day is the USD/JPY couple gaining 0.34 percent to $104.74.

Global Markets

Asian markets were mixed overnight. The Shanghai index dropped 1.58 percent with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng up 1.13 percent. Japan’s volatile Nikkei moved up roughly one percent on the day.

European markets were mostly in the green Thursday. The Euro Stoxx index, which tracks 50 euro zone blue chips rallied 0.77 percent. London’s FTSE added 0.23 percent, and France’s CAC gained 0.07 percent.