Today's Markets

Maybe one of the reasons for sluggish retail sales is gas prices are hitting records. We also learned the credit crunch has forced 46 lenders to stop making student loans. And we learned that airlines calcelled more flights ticking off more people (again). There was some good news from the airlines: Delta's pilots agreed to a a contract for a merger deal with Northwest. While initial jobless claims fell to 357,000, the 4-week moving average is still the highest it's been in two years.



The markets rose and then fell into the close today. But the real story is how the SPYs are focusing on the 136 level; for some reason, that price level is attracting a lot of attention.



The big news today was the big rally on the NASDAQ, which rallied 1.43%. The big news here was the continuing moves on Yahoo.



But, we also saw a big move on the IWMs.

However, looking at the charts from above, it's obvious we're still in a trading range of a few points on all the averages. After seeing big gain on Tuesday 4/1, we've seen the markets barely budge. While the news has been pretty negative since then, we haven't seen a huge drop. My best guess is the Fed's backstop of opening up the discount window to investment banks is really backstopping the market as a whole right now. I have to proof for that; it's just a gut level feeling.