Friday, April 1, 2011

Odd Things - March 31, 2011

Sometimes I see things that strike me as odd. Today is opening day for baseball. Doesn’t seem to make sense, to me, that baseball would begin when the weather, in most of the country, is not warm and sunny. On March 10th, the front page of the Wall Street Journal had two articles next to each other. First was “Discovery’s Last Flight Caps Era in Space Exploration” and next to it “Deficit Proposal Picks Up New Allies.” Seems that only yesterday we were “investing” in space exploration to bring about new innovation here on earth, and oddly, now it’s gone. Recent reaction to continuing drops in job losses and increases in job creation has been mixed. At 10 a.m. this morning, the “Jobs Report” article on MSN Money noted that the DJIA was down because of the report. By the time the “Strong Jobs Report” (same report) was issued by MSN Money at 12:26 p.m., the DJIA was up +87, also noted because of the jobs report. As I was looking at this new posting it was 2:30 p.m. and the DJIA was down again. Seemed odd to me and I wondered if the same report would be renamed again based on how the DJIA finished the day; and it was, to "Lack Luster Jobs Report." So here is the thing: the economy appears to be improving, but what is really happening with the stock market? I like to follow the S&P 500; seems to me that more stocks in the index make it a better gauge of what is happening. On December 31, 2011, the S&P 500 closed at 1257.64. On March 16, 2011, after going up and down for many weeks, it stood at 1256.88 (a slight loss). Now we are at the end of the first quarter of 2011 and the S&P 500 is up about 5.6% since March 16th. It all seems odd to me, but I am happy it is back up. Ed Mallon