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It was an interesting day for equities:

Stocks on Wall Street notched a new low for the year on Monday, as worries about the economy continued to dog investors ahead of a crucial Federal Reserve decision on interest rates later this week.

It was the latest in a string of volatile trading sessions that has left investors limping through the last weeks of 2018. Since stocks reached a record high in September, the market has been buffeted by a range of concerns, from signs that the trade war between China and the United States is beginning to weigh on global growth to worries that higher interest rates will eat into corporate profits.

It made for a shaky day in the markets. Crude oil dove. Corporate bonds were lower. Stocks dropped almost across the board, with shares of tech, health care and small companies as well as blue-chip corporations all lower.

When the dust had cleared, the S&P 500 was down 2.1 for the day and 4.8 percent for the year. Should the market fail to recover, 2018 would be Wall Street’s worst year since the financial crisis a decade ago.

…and in Canada:

The Toronto Stock Exchange S&P/TSX index lost 232 points or 1.6 per cent on the day.and is down 11.4 per cent this year. It ended the day at 14,362 and seems set to end the year in negative territory.

Oil’s drop has weighed heavily on the TSX. The North American benchmark contract fell below $50 US today, ending the session at $49.15 US a barrel. That’s the lowest since the fall of 2017. Western Canada Select was at $37.38 US.

TXPR closed at 623.75, down 1.47% from Friday‘s close, but still comfortably above the 52-week low of 609.77 set on December 6. Volume was on the high side, but nothing extraordinary in the context of the last thirty days – in fact, it was the lowest of the past five trading days! Mind you, there was a huge number of issues trading more than 10,000 shares – the two observations taken together suggest to me that there is a lot of retail action but not much institutional.

CPD closed at 12.50, down 1.73% from Friday’s close, but still well above the 52-week low of 12.11 touched on December 6. Volume of 212,143 was nothing special in the context of the past thirty days.

ZPR closed at 10.22, down 1.45% since Friday, but still well above the 52-week low of 9.80 reached on December 6. Volume of 285,474 was high but not out of line with the past thirty days.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 17th, 2018 at 9:02 pm and is filed under Market Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.