每日市场点评 --- June 11, 2008

Bears are back in the driver’s seat after two relatively quiet sessions. All three major indices ended the day lower by at least 1.5%. Surging oil price, which advanced more than $5 a barrel, again became the suspect behind today’s sharp sell-off. Continuous weakness in the key financial sector only made things worse. The Fed’s latest Beige Book offered little surprise. Three of the 12 regional Fed banks reported “softer, weaker or lower” growth and four had “slower, sluggish or modest” expansion. The rest five areas reported condition as “stable or little changed”. It essentially means that although the growth rate is slowing, there is also no clear evidence of contracting. However, manufacturers in several regions did report that they were able to pass on higher raw material costs to customers, a sign that inflation may potentially become a more serious issue in the next few months.

Energies were the only major sector that managed to post a gain. On the losing side, we had familiar names such as financials and transportations. Actually the latter experienced the biggest 1-day decline in at least 5 years. The CRB commodity index, led by agriculture products and energies, surged another 2.7% and closed at a new high. One reason behind the rally in commodity price is weakness in the US dollar, which gave back some gains from the previous two days. Treasuries rebounded from recent loss while yields dipping across the curve. The VIX index jumped another 4% but remained too low to trigger a capitulation rally. The market breath continued to be negative and it was worth noting that we already had four straight sessions with up issues ratio below 35%. The last time we had similar situation was back on July 23, 2002.