Today’s trading began amidst a multitude of unpleasant factors.

Despite last week’s little rally, April showers have dampened market. While it didn’t build into a torrential downpour, it steadily showered investors with worse-than-expected economic data, including last week’s dreadful Durable Goods Report (-4.2% compared to last month’s +1.9%), continued but minor increases in initial jobless claims throughout April, and a disappointing initial Q1 estimate of GDP (+2.2% compared the previous quarter’s +3.0%).

Walmart-Gate, Dutch-Gate, Netflix-Gate, Exit-Gate!

This could be the “exit gate” but probably not.  Over the weekend, the New York Times released a blockbuster story about Walmart’s (WMT) alleged massive cover-up of serious violations of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act involving more than $24 million dollars in bribes to accelerate store openings and bypass permit and zoning practices.  The stock was down 4.55% today, at $59.54.

Here we are again wondering what the market wants.  Today, it clearly wasn’t Technology stocks, as various issues dragged both Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) lower.

Last Monday was a banner day for most indices with S&P 500 hitting at new 46-month high of 1422.  Alas, a week later, today, it closed at 1382, down nearly -3%.  The NASDAQ and DJIA exhibited similar behavior.

Technology led today’s robust rally as the dollar continued to weaken. Financials, especially banks, remained strong the first three days of last week then fell to profit-taking on the final two days, ending down a little more than -0.5% for the week.  Today, that sector regained all of that loss and advanced an extra 25 basis points to reach near multi-year highs, although it is still more than 50% off its early 2007 high.

Banks Fairly Valued and Contributing to Market Strength

Continuing last week’s strength, Financials and Technology led the market again today. Banks were up nearly +2% intraday, although they lost some of their steam when put-option trades in Financial ETFs reached 4-month highs.  Last week, they roared ahead +7%, and they are now up more than +20% year-to-date.

This Could be THE Week

The S&P 500 really cut it close today.  Much like last Friday’s measly comeback for +0.1% gain for the week, it gained +0.22 points, up a whopping +0.016%.

The Continuing Conundrum

It's a Conundrum