August 9, 2016 Market Wrap Up

The S&P 500 traded slightly higher today on below average volume, a theme over the last couple of weeks. The SPDR S&P 500 traded about 50 million shares, whereas on average it’s been trading around 76 million shares per day.

Stocks in play today include: Valeant Pharmaceuticals (VRX) +26%, Rackspace (RAX) + 6.7%, and Wayfair (W) -19.7%.

The VIX closed higher, still trading below 12 at 11.66.

Crude oil futures closed mildly lower, closing under $43 per barrel. Gold and Treasury bonds both caught a bid today, both gaining about .5%.

On the options front, we saw large call buying activity in Splunk (SPLK) at 2.5 times normal option volume. In addition, we saw heavy put buying in Phillips 66 at 2.2 times normal options volume.

This evening we got earnings out of Disney (DIS) -.5%, Yelp (YELP) +13.8%, Sunpower (SPWR) -22.7%, and Fossil (FOSL) +3.7%.

Here’s what’s on tap for tomorrow and the rest of the week:

Key Economic Data:
10 Aug 2016- EIA Petroleum Status Report 10:30 AM ET
11 Aug 2016- Jobless Claims 8:30 AM ET
12 Aug 2016- Retail Sales 8:30 AM ET, PPI 8:30 AM ET

Key Earnings:
10 Aug 2016- JD, KORS, PRGO, RL, WEN, BUFF, SHAK
11 Aug 2016- BABA, EAT, FLO, CSAL, KSS, M, JWN, NVDA, RT
12 Aug 2016- JCP

Key Conferences:
Credit Suisse Transports Conference (runs till 8/10); Jefferies Industrials Conference (runs till 8/11); JPMorgan Auto Conference (runs till 8/10); Oppenheimer Tech, Internet, and Communications Conference (runs till 8/10); UBS Financial Services Conference (runs till 8/10)

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