Upadate #1/ Week of April 26, 2010

Good Morning Everyone and Happy Monday! It is a Monday, so we almost have to have a positive day in equity markets. The Dow is struggling to hold on to this morning’s gains, but the NASDAQ and S & P have already fallen below the flat line. Last week equities were positive for the 8th straight week. This rally is truly amazing. The Dow the week previous (ending April 16th) had only eked out an 21 point gain to keep the streak alive. Last week (the week ending April 23rd) the Dow gained an impressive 186 points, or just shy of 1.7% -- a good week for equities to say the least.

Even better news than that, credit markets have remained in a trough this whole time, not losing any ground for the last several weeks. Although, we are at a new plateau in pricing and it would sure be nice to see this rally in equities break and credit markets improve. It’s bound to happen eventually. Last week’s positive rally in US equity markets got the Asian markets off to a good start early this morning – Japan’s Nikkei closed with a rise of over 250 points and China’s Hang Seng gained almost 350 points! However, US markets don’t seem to be able to capitalize on the momentum thus far.

Earnings season continues this week as we heard from Whirlpool, Caterpillar and Humana which all, of course, beat the street. Citigroup announced that the Treasury Dept will be selling off 7 billion shares of the company – probably at a discount. There are no major economic news releases of note today. However, we will have another round of Treasury auctions this week, starting with an auction of 5-year TIPS today. This will continue all week, and may have some impact on credit markets.

I will be in the office all day today… Have a terrific Monday and a very prosperous and productive week!