Dave Lutz of Stifel, Nicolaus passes along the topics that he's talking about with
We summarize in bullets:
- EU markets off a touch. Spreads wider on news that Italy will miss growth targets.
- Markets closed in the UK.
- Dollar index showing strength. Yields unchanged.
- Not much stress in markets related to situation in Israel/Syria.
- Lots of talk about the strong defensive stocks. From Bloomberg: : “Defensive shares such as JNJ and PG have rallied 19 percent on average in 2013, the best start since 1991, and exceeded cyclical stocks by more than 8 percentage points last month, the most since October 1998. As long as the economy isn’t shrinking, a gap of that size has presaged rallies of 10 percent in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index since 1973”