Stocks Claw Out Of The Red On Friday
Wall Street Sector Selector | Jun 23, 2013 12:33AM ET
Stocks were able to benefit from a couple of factors which stopped the losing streak, which was sparked by Ben Bernanke’s disclosure of the Fed’s quantitative easing phase-out timetable. Friday was a “quadruple witching” day, which marks the quarterly expiration of stock futures, stock options, stock index futures and stock index options. As soon as the “witching hour” began at 3:00, the major stock indices surged, although the Nasdaq was too deeply into the red numbers to make an escape.
The stock market also benefited from a 1:00 blog posting by Ben Bernanke’s de facto “press secretary”, Jon Hilsenrath of The Wall Street Journal, who informed investors that “markets might be misreading the Fed’s messages”. As Mark Twain would have said: “Reports of quantitative easing’s death have been greatly exaggerated”.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DIA) picked up 41 points to finish Friday’s trading session at 14,799 for a 0.28 percent advance. The S&P 500 (SPY) rose 0.27 percent to close at 1,592.
The Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) declined 0.43 percent to close at 2,877. The Russell 2000 (IWM) climbed 0.33 percent to close at 963.
In other major markets, oil (USO) fell 1.19 percent to close at $33.23.
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