Markets Making More Milestones

The Dow continued its weekly winning streak with another milestone, closing above 28,000 for the first time: 28,004.89 to be exact.  That's a gain of 222.93.  Now, I'm sure everybody is getting their "Dow 30,000!" hats ready, because obviously that's not too far off, now from 28,000.  But it's not just the Dow that is setting records and crossing milestones. The NASDAQ - another record high today - up 61.81, closing at 8,540.83.  That's the first time the NASDAQ has been above 8,500.  The S&P also making new highs, up 23.83 - 3120.46 is the close. This is the first time the S&P has been above 3100.

Russell 2000 Sitting Out the Party

The only major index really not enjoying the party, although it was up again today is the Russell 2000, still not quite near an all-time record high.  That index is at 1,596.  Again, the Russell is the one that most reflects the domestic economy, and it is the domestic economy that is in a lot of trouble. In fact, the Dow rose today, despite more weak economic data that was released during the day.

Industrial Production: Weak

Probably the weakest data point of them all was on industrial production. It was supposed to drop again after falling .4% in September, and they did revise the September drop to -.3% from -.4%.  But instead of a .4 drop in October, which was the consensus forecast, we dropped by .8.  So twice as large a decline. In fact, I think you have to go back to March of 2009 to see a larger decline than that in industrial production.  Capacity Utilization really contracted as well, from 77.5; it went all the way down to 76.7.

Halfway to Recession

And we also got more weak news on business inventories, which were revised lower.  And I think that, and industrial production and some other weak data points that had come out caused the Atlanta Fed to reduce its forecast for Q4 GDP all the way down to .3%. It was at 1%, and now it's at .3% which is close to zero. And in fact, it's very likely that we could end up with a negative print for Q4 GDP, which means we're halfway to recession.