Daily News 12/29/14
December 29, 2014
Monday – December 29
The end of year “Santa Claus” stock rally is being stifled a bit, while investors mull over geopolitical headlines. Mortgage Bonds are trading in positive territory, looking to rally on investor concerns and light volume. This short trading week with lacking volume can magnify moves and appear as market volatility.
Geopolitical headlines are running the market today. Greece is in the spotlight, once again. The Greek Parliament was unable to pull off a successful presidential election, thus creating a great deal of concern surrounding their current “bail out” agreements. Investors are concerned that if the Syriza party wins in January’s snap election, their overall opposition to austerity measures could result in failure to pay back debt owed to the other European countries. The conflicts in Libya are supporting commodity/energy stocks, with firefights depleting the county’s supply by an estimated 800,000.
Libyan conflict is pushing crude oil prices higher. This slowed daily production, as it does not take much excitement to move oil prices. The turmoil in the area has cut the nation’s output from 1.6 million barrels a day, in 2011, to a current average of 128,000 barrels a day.
