Stock Indices Post Mixed Earnings; Dollar Continues to Fall Against Euro; Gap Between U.S. and Foreign Oil Widens

Stock Indices Post Mixed Earnings (Bloomberg)

The Dow rallied to a new high as the S&P 500 snapped a four-day rise on Tuesday. The S&P 500 had previously reached a record high on Monday. “What you’re seeing is revenues are coming in pretty lackluster and profits seem to be doing a little better than gains in sales,” Hank Herrmann, Overland Park, Kansas-based chief executive officer of Waddell & Reed Investment Management Co., said. “The market had a period of digesting the confusion over Fed tapering. For the moment, it’s focused on individual company fundamentals.”

Dollar Continues to Fall Against Euro (CNBC)

The dollar declined to a one-month low against the Euro Tuesday, as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s comments from last week continued to have an adverse affect on the dollar. “In the absence of any economic news, positioning has been driving the FX market,” said Brian Dangerfield, currency strategist at RBS Securities in Stamford, Connecticut. “The market is still quite long dollars and in quiet periods like today, traders are scaling back their positions especially in the wake of what Bernanke said last week.”

Gap Between U.S. and Foreign Oil Widens (CNBC)

Brent Crude rose against U.S. Oil Tuesday, as Brent overcame a fragile global economy to stay above $108. Olivier Jakob, analyst at Petromatrix in Zug, Switzerland, highlighted the role of the dollar’s strength in making oil more expensive outside the United States. “There is a price impact on demand. If you look at some currencies, oil at around $110 now is equivalent to around $127 a year ago,” he said. “It’s a factor capping prices.”