Surging Into The Close

The markets looked like they might give up all of their early gains following the release of the FOMC minutes, but a strong rally in the final 20 minutes made for a relatively positive day.

Volume rose on the session, to above-average levels. This makes for an accumulation day. I hesitate to say it was the type of follow-thru day that I was looking for though. The SPX and COMP rose less than 1%, though the mid-cap and small-cap indexes rose +1.5% and +1.4%, respectively.

I think the late day strength smelled of month-end markups. As such, I would like to see some additional strength as further confirmation.

But it was still a solid day. Biotechs and energy were up the most (+2.4% each), followed by chips stocks which gained +1.8%. Housing stocks were the lone group in the red.

Oil finished flat, closing back above the $71 level. And the 10-year yield finished at 5.11%, up on the day. As for investor sentiment, the ISE Sentiment Index made a new 52-week low (89), and the CBOE put/call ratio was above 1.0 again for most of the day. So those are additional positives for this market, from a contrarian perspective.
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