Today’s close: Up .8%
Yesterday’s harrowing dive turned into this morning’s red-tinted disappointment, but Caterpillar rallied into the close to finish a few baby steps into the green at 44.02. Wal-Mart, one of the only Dow companies to finish 2008 in the plus column, gave everybody a chill by lowering its guidance, but by the end of the day, as word emerged of a plan to help struggling homeowners, the markets started inching back up again. More at the Wall Street Journal.
The indexes were a mishmash: S&P and Nadaq up a scratch, the Dow a slice into the red. More at Yahoo Finance.
It’s never wise to read too much into a single day’s move, but today’s Cat chart reads more characteristically of a bull market than a bear: starting out low and climbing the wall of worry to close on its high. Much worse is the day that starts out high and collapses — the typical move of a slope-of-hope bear trend. Today’s Cat volume, 9.3 million, is just a shade higher than yesterday’s, but not enough to mean much one way or the other, I suspect.