Friday, July 18, 2008

Stocks Continue to Straddle the Flatline

Crude oil has moved lower again today. Talk of an agreement between the U.S. and Iran will continue to provide downward momentum, and the bearish impact should not be underestimated. That's great news for suffering motorists, like myself.

Unfortunately, stock index futures haven't benefited much from the good news., either from lower oil prices or on the geopolitical front. Stock futures have continued thus far in the session to straddle the flat line. Because of the disappointments in the tech sector earnings reports (IBM, Microsoft, Google, and AMD), the NASDAQ futures are still trading substantially lower. Flat conditions for the Dow and S&P makes it very difficult to trade them profitably.