Good morning contrarians! Welcome to the Daily Contrarian, our morning look at events likely to move markets. It is Tuesday, April 9. The Bottom Line segment of today’s podcast starts at (3:30) for listeners who want to skip ahead.
State of Play
Stocks did absolutely nothing yesterday. It was a quiet trading day as anticipated in light of the dearth of known events. As we look at our board of indicators at 0630, all is quiet once again on the eve of the CPI:
Stock index futures are basically flat again. No major index is moving more than 0.2% from the break-even point;
Bonds are flat. The 2-year yield 4.77% whilst the 10-year trades at 4.40%;
In commoditiesland we’re looking at a fresh rally in precious metals, with gold, silver, and platinum each up 1% or more. Elsewhere there’s little movement with WTI crude oil unchanged at $86.50/barrel and copper up 0.4%;
Cryptos have retreated a bit, with Bitcoin down 2% to trade around $70,400.
Today’s Known Events
So another quiet day. All we have are a couple of earnings. Tilray (TLRY 0.00%↑) reports before the open at 0930. After the close at 1600 we’ll hear from WD-40 (WDFC 0.00%↑) and RCI Hospitality Holdings (RICK 0.00%↑), which is the only public strip club company in the US.
These aren’t officially first quarter earnings because these companies have fiscal quarters that fall outside of the typical parameters. Delta Air Lines (DAL 0.00%↑) kicks off the ‘real’ quarterly earnings (covering the Jan. 1 to March 31 period) after the close tomorrow. That will in all likelihood be overshadowed by the CPI, out tomorrow morning.
The Bottom Line©️
The movement in precious metals says investors could be worried about premature Fed rate cuts that will undermine the stability of the US dollar. This being precious metals, there are of course other factors that come in to play. Still, worth keeping an eye on.
Otherwise it will probably be another boring day. No way to sugarcoat it. There isn’t even anything to really pontificate. It’s so quiet, The Contrarian isn’t even moved to take to his soap box. That will all change tomorrow with the CPI. We’ll be back to discuss that 24 hours from now.
Housekeeping
Obviously this is not investment advice (duh). Do your own research, make your own decisions.
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