Markets rallied Thursday and on weekly basis the S&P 500 is higher by 3.4% looking at a potential bullish outside week depending on tomorrows close. It has recovered all of last weeks 2.8% drop and with Thursdays gain of 1% it is now positive YTD. The Nasdaq’s gain of 1% has put it in the plus column as well for 2015 and its weekly move up of 2.8% squashes last weeks loss of roughly the same amount. At the expense of sounding like a broken record it was the energy and materials group that led the way. Energy firms are getting “leaner and meaner” and that could be a positive at the expense unfortunately of job cuts. SLB recently announced a lay off of 9,000 people and today laggard WFT is cutting its workforce by 5,000. Slashing cap ex and rig counts perhaps investors are seeing some early value in the group. Perhaps we can gain some insight into how the economy is faring with a look into the business card printers and the moves in some of the bigger names in the group like DLX which we profiled on out Twitter stream yesterday. It is up over 8% YTD and trading at all time highs. CMPR was up better than 4% today and reported its 3rd consecutive blow out earnings report on 1/29 up 13.6%. Prior to that it was higher by 16.7 and 30.6% on 10/30 and 7/31. Print that up on a snazzy business card and garner the proper attention.
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