First, the scoreboard:
- Dow: 15,501.3, +37.3, +0.2%
- S&P 500: 1,682.7, +2.5, +0.1%
- NASDAQ: 3,607.7, +7.7, +0.2%
And now, the top stories:
- The Dow and S&P 500 closed at new all-time highs today. The last time the S&P closed up eight times in a row was November 2004.
- June U.S. retail sales were disappointing. The headline sales figure climbed by just 0.4%, falling short of expectations for a 0.8% gain. Excluding autos and gas, sales unexpectedly fell 0.1%. Economists were looking for a 0.4% gain.
- Immediately after the report, economists at Barclays, Goldman Sachs, and Deutsche Bank slashed their forecasts for Q2 GDP growth. "Today's number complicates Q2 GDP estimates," tweeted BTIG's Dan Greenhaus. "Q2 should be less than 1.0%, the second time in 3 qtrs GDP is less than 1.0%. That's not very good."
- Still, stocks rallied. Bank of America Merrill Lynch's Savita Subramanian cranked up her year-end target for the S&P 500 to 1,750 from 1,600.
- Over night, we learned that China's GDP growth rate decelerated to just 7.5% in Q2, down from 7.7% in Q1.
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