Wait And See Market
Given the uncertainty on how the economic downturn will ultimately impact profits, investors have decided to sit on their hands and take a wait and see attitude.
– Jack Ablin, Chief Investment Officer, Harris Private Bank
In today’s linkfest, Kirk’s top link was to an interesting Bloomberg article that points out that trading volumes over the last 5 days including today (Thursday April 3 – Wednesday April 9) have dropped off precipitously from the pace set so far this year (NYSE Volume+ YTD Chart).
If you look at the NYSE Volume+ YTD Chart you can see that volume has dropped dramatically below it’s 50 day moving average over the last 4 trading days – and today is more of the same.
What this means is that investors are just waiting for the significant earnings news that will start coming out in the next week or two in order to give them some sense of where we go from here. That’s why it’s been so slow the last few days.