American stocks once again finished the day in the red as all
the major benchmarks slumped during Thursday's session. The Dow
ended lower by about 0.25% while the broader indexes had worse days
as the S&P 500 declined by 0.5% and the Nasdaq lost about
0.8%.
In terms of sector performances, tech and financials were both
leading the way on the downside while basic materials and
industrial conglomerates also had rough days. On the upside,
however, staples did quite well, led by a 3.8% move higher in
PG
and a 4.1% surge in pharma giant
Merck (
MRK
)
.
Thanks to this market weakness, the dollar index added a few
basis points on the day, rising to $83.61 as the euro tested the
$1.22 mark. Meanwhile, in Treasury bonds, the 10 year saw yields
decline below the 1.50% mark while the 30 year was trading with a
yield of just 2.56% in comparison.
Commodities did have a solid day despite the stronger dollar, as
all energy products-with the exception of WTI crude-were in the
green, although metals did broadly trend lower. Agricultural
commodities were again volatile as cocoa slumped by 4.5% in U.S.
trading while corn added 4% and wheat jumped by 2.5% (watch
Exploring EFs: Zacks ETF Rank
).
In ETF trading, volume was surprisingly robust across the board
as many products traded in line with their historical volume
averages. Investors saw especially solid volume in the commodity
market as well as in some of the short-leverage funds, while a few
of the mining ETFs also were active during Thursday's volatile
session.
One ETF that was especially in focus was
the ProShares UltraShort MSCI Emerging Markets Index Fund (
EEV
)
. This -2x fund which rebalances on a daily basis usually does
about 377,000 shares in volume per day but saw a spike to 1.6
million shares during Thursday's session (read
Three Overlooked Emerging Market ETFs
).
This volume was pretty well spread out but investors did see a
few block trades during the session including one of over 150,000
shares. It also resulted in a positive day for EEV as the fund
added more than 3.3% as speculation over an emerging market
slowdown continues to build, pushing more investors into inverse
products like this popular one from ProShares.
Another fund that saw outsized trading volumes was the
ProShares UltraShort Industrials ETF (
SIJ
)
. This bear ETF usually traded just 6,900 shares a day but saw
nearly five times as many shares move hands in Thursday's session
(see
Three Industrial ETFs Outperforming XLI
).
Interestingly, this bump in volume was also seen in the broad
industrial space as well, as represented by XLI, the most popular
ETF in the space. However, concerns over the health of the
industrial side of the economy are mounting and SIJ was the place
to be in this segment during Thursday's session as the product
added about 0.9% on the day.
(see more in the
Zacks
ETF Center
)
PRO-ULS MSCI EM (EEV): ETF Research Reports
MERCK & CO INC (MRK): Free Stock Analysis
Report
PROCTER & GAMBL (PG): Free Stock Analysis
Report
PRO-ULS INDU (SIJ): ETF Research Reports
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