ISM Index

The manufacturing index came in at the slowest pace seen this year, but still better then analysts expected which gave the market another shot in the arm. The reading was 55.5, expected reading was 54.1. A reading above 50 indicates manufacturing growth, below 50 shows manufacturing contraction. The question is will they tie this lowest number of the year with the surprisingly low GDP?

I listed a lot of longs last night for a few reasons, one I mentioned that last Friday was the last day of the month which means window dressing where managers sell assets that aren't performing, are many times bought back on the first day of the new trading month. In this manner they have the bad assets off their books for end of month reports.

So a pop up in the morning is not anything unusual on the first day of the month or a quarter.

In the market there's a few intraday divergences to the downside, but more importantly there's no volume follow through on the move so as I explained (last night I believe), the market will take any pop like this and use it to make money off retail traders, but unless the volume picks up, we can pretty safely assume that institutional money is still not impressed and hasn't changed their outlook.