…..Energy prices slip. Stocks weak. Beige Book sees problems with tight labor. Fed policymakers on gradual path to raise rates and trim balance sheet. Earnings season. Morgan Stanley beats Goldman. eBay can’t beat Amazon. Qualcomm bogged down by litigation. AmEx after Costco. Blackrock rules ETFs. Understanding bank earnings. Financial Review by Sinclair Noe for 04-19-2017 DOW – 118 = 20,404 SPX – 4 = 2338 NAS + 13 = 5863 RUT + 5 = 1367 10 Y + .02 = 2.20% OIL – 1.83 = 50.58 GOLD – 8.90 = 1281.30   Energy stocks were under pressure Wednesday as crude-oil prices settled at a two-and-a-half week low and its biggest one-day loss in 6 weeks. Gasoline inventories posted a surprise increase, a counter-seasonal build of 1.5 million barrels in the latest week, along with an increase in U.S. production. The energy sector was the worst performer among the S&P 500 index’s 11 sectors.  Shares of International Business Machines were largely responsible for a decline in the Dow industrials. IBM lost about 5%, after posting its 20th consecutive quarter of declining revenue. IBM has an outsize impact because the Dow is price-weighted, meaning the most expensive stocks (rather than the largest companies) have the biggest pull. Monday’s rally was on low volume, a sign of weakness. Yesterday’s selloff saw volume increase. In the U.S. Treasury market, bond yields rose after a rally on Tuesday sent yields to five-month lows.   The Federal Reserve publishes the Beige Book two weeks prior to FOMC monetary ...