Stocks Open Lower on First Day of School

Stocks Open Lower

September 7, 2010
Stocks opened lower today after Friday’s rally. The Dow Jones Industrial Average opened down 47 points, the NASDAQ was down 6.25 points, and the S&P 500 was down 6.25 points. This comes one day after President Obama outlined a $50 Billion plan to rebuild American Infrastructure. The economy is still spiraling downward, with unemployment now set at 9.6% across the country. The high unemployment rate is blamed for the low performance of the stock markets, because consumers are not spending. Consumer confidence and income drives spending, which drives 70% of the American economy.

New economic data, including jobs numbers, is not expected to be released today, but will be released tomorrow. Petroleum supplies, jobless claims for last week, and the Trade Balance report are expected to be released tomorrow. Consumer Confidence numbers are expected to be released today after the close.
Former HP head Mark Hurd has been hired to be co-President and to sit on the board of Executives of Oracle, the world’s second-largest software maker. He seems to have moved on and done well after his release from Hewlett-Packard.
Consumer confidence is expected to remain low, since the unemployment rate edged up to 9.6%. People are very worried about their jobs and their finances. Part of this was due to the loss of more than 100,000 temporary census worker jobs. The opening numbers on the stock markets do not always accurately reflect how the market will perform through the day, or how particular stocks will perform. The numbers are significantly lower than Friday’s rally, however, and traders and analysts, as well as investors are still quite cautious.