Monday featured another low-volume advance for the major indices and another round of new highs for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, market cap-weighted S&P 500, equal-weighted S&P 500, and S&P Midcap 400.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is a basis to keep those streaks going today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Goldman Sachs (GS)<\/strong>, Bank of America (BAC)<\/strong>, Citigroup (C)<\/strong>, and Charles Schwab (SCHW)<\/strong> are higher after each of them reported quarterly results that were better than expected. The geopolitical temperature has been turned down a bit, too, following reports that Israel is likely to retaliate against Iran by striking military targets instead oil and\/or nuclear facilities. And Treasury yields are moving lower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The latter has been helped by the pullback in oil prices and other commodity prices, which has also been influenced by a Wall Street Journal<\/em> report that President Xi’s aim with stimulus efforts is to avert a financial crisis in China and not massively stimulate demand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The October New York Fed Empire Manufacturing Survey was a mixed bag. The headline print of -11.9 (Briefing.com consensus 2.0; prior 11.5) was ugly, led by a drop in new orders (to -10.2 from 9.4). The dividing line between expansion and contraction is 0.0. An offset to the disappointing headline print was the uptick in the indexes for number of new employees (to 4.1 from -5.7) and the average employee workweek (to 4.7 from 2.9).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The 2-yr note yield is unchanged from Friday’s cash settlement at 3.94% while the 10-yr note yield is down two basis points to 4.05%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stocks are not expected to do much at today’s open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n