D&D Market Note of the Day ~ April 2, 2020

Markets swung wildly today beginning in the red to rally in the morning to fall back into the red midday to then rally again into the close.

DOW finished up 2.24% the S&P 500 up 2.28% and the NASDAQ up 1.72%

Unemployment numbers saw the biggest jump ever of 6.6 million.

The total number of Coronavirus infections globally has now exceeded 1 million.

Trump says in a tweet that Russia and Saudi Arabia are going to cut oil production by 10 million barrels which certainly caused some of the intraday market price action. Oil gained on the day with WTI rising 22%. The major Oil stocks helped overall market rally on the day.

In what is likely to be a reoccurring theme is rolling corrections in specific stocks when they pull their guidance for 2020. Today Shopify (SHOP) pulled guidance and the stock fell 10%. As each company potentially pulls guidance similar selloffs are likely to happen. This also means investors might need to look to dollar cost average themselves into specific stocks on individual price action rather than waiting for the overall market to try and retest lows. With current volatility we could easily retest the lows in the market intraday and then just rally by the close of the session.

It’s very hard to time markets and even harder to time “when to get back in.”

The VIX (fear gauge) fell 10.78% to 50.91 but still elevated. The reading needs to come below 50 and remain before any sustainable rally can keep its legs.

Telsa gains 10% in after-hours trading on news their quarterly deliveries fell less than expected.

~ Dave James / Principal Trader and Market Strategist