Crude oil fallen prices is in everyone's mind as 3% was shade off the price therefore weighing on the market all day. As mentioned yesterday the light volume of trade does not help as every movement positive or negative will move the market in either direction.
Oil decline lead the S&P 500 Sector to nearly 1.5% decline most of the day. As there is nothing else to do or no news for the day, we are now focused on oil for lack of better news for the Holiday.
Watching the U.S. crude oil futures today on todays news, it settled at $36.60 a barrel due to inventories building up to millions of barrels. this was an unexpected news that allow the market to tumble more that 117 points. The expectation was that inventories will decline, however, it turned out that instead of a decline, there was an increase instead according to Petroleum Institute. The news of an increase affected the DOW Transport which declined with the news. Pending home sell falling to 0.9% did not help the light day trading section either according to National Association of Realtor
Gold futures for February delivery settled down $8.20 at $1,059.80 an ounce.
Happy New Year