WSM - Markets Await Existing Home Sales Numbers | Benzinga
Pre-market futures are slightly into the red at this hour. Although we've seen nice gains on all major indices month-to-date — the Dow +5%, S&P 500 +5.3%, the small-cap Russell 2000 +5.7% and the Nasdaq +7% — we look to have flattened off somewhat over the past week. The Nasdaq and S&P appear to be separating slightly high than the others from a week ago, but those big market up-days look to have cooled off of late.
It's unlikely we'll see a big market impact before today's close. True, the Fed minutes from the most recent FOMC meeting on May 1st will be released today at 2pm, but based simply on the fact that the Fed has kept the funds rate unchanged at 5.25-5.50% for the past 10 months (and counting), we don't anticipate seeing a vastly wide range of opinion in the minutes. The Fed is not expected to bring us another "dot plot" schedule for possible interest rate cuts until the June meeting (19th-20th).
One thing we saw from this meeting was a measured decline in security holdings. These will move from -$60 billion per month to -$25 billion per month ...