American stocks had a choppy, but generally positive session in
Wednesday trading , although huge gains were hard to come by.
Instead, the Dow finished ahead by just seven points, the S&P
500 added a single point, and the Nasdaq slumped by five points on
the day.
From a sector look, consumer goods and industrial goods did
well, along with big oil, while big industrial conglomerates,
banks, and smaller travel-oriented service firms led the way on the
downside. Meanwhile, European trading was also mixed,
although many indexes across the continent had a late session surge
to close out Wednesday trading.
This choppy session also saw little movement in the forex or
bond trading markets, as the dollar was flat and the ten year rose
just two basis points. However, investors did see a big reduction
in German bond rates, as well as Italian rates which moved further
away from the 6% level (read
Three Impressive Small Cap Dividend ETFs
)
Investors did see a generally positive session in the commodity
market, led by softs and gold. Livestock was another big winner on
the day, while industrial metals and WTI crude did see their prices
slip to close out Wednesday.
ETF trading continued its relatively slow August period as many
popular ETFs saw volume that was less than half of their usual
daily average. This trend stretched across commodities and into
both domestic and international products, although we did see some
outsized trading in a few sector funds, some bond ETFs, and a
number of global products as well.
In particular, ETF investors saw the
PowerShares Dynamic Media ETF (
PBS
)
trade far more shares than usual. The fund usually does about
44,000 shares in a normal session but saw 164,000 shares move hands
in Wednesday trading (Read
Play A Consumer Recovery with these Discretionary
ETFs
).
This solid volume, which was due to a few block trades, came as
PBS breached its 52 week high and added about 0.5% on the session.
The bump in interest also came right before the fund's top
component
News Corp (
NWSA
)
, was due to report earnings, an event that could potentially act
as a catalyst for the rest of the sector to close out the week.
Another fund which saw an increase in trading volume was the
United States Gasoline Fund (
UGA
)
. This product usually does about 38,000 shares in a normal day but
saw volume hit the 103,000 share mark today (see
Inside The Forgotten Energy ETFs
).
Although the ETF lost about 0.5% today, some are likely honing
in on the fund due to the recent refinery fire in California.
The recent blaze
at a major Northern California plant looks to hamper production of
gasoline refinement and could create some volatility in the
product's price over the next few days. Due to this, UGA could see
more volume in the days ahead as well, especially if the damage
looks to be more severe than originally thought.
(see more in the
Zacks
ETF Center
)
NEWS CORP INC-A (NWSA): Free Stock Analysis
Report
PWRSH-DYN MEDIA (PBS): ETF Research Reports
US GAS FUND LP (UGA): ETF Research Reports
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