by Bespoke Invest­ment Group

If there was ever a day that illus­trated how focused the mar­ket is on Europe, it is today.  Prior to today's open, we saw a slew of eco­nomic data regard­ing the US econ­omy, and of the six reports that were released, only one was bet­ter than expected.  In today's reports, head­line and core CPI read­ings were at their high­est lev­els since 2008.  In terms of employ­ment, both ini­tial and con­tin­u­ing claims were higher than expected.  Regard­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing, the Empire Man­u­fac­tur­ing report was weaker than expected.  At 9:15, Capac­ity Uti­liza­tion came in slightly weaker than expected, while Indus­trial Pro­duc­tion was the lone bet­ter than expected report.

Even in the one sup­posed bright spot of Indus­trial Pro­duc­tion, the news wasn't so great.  As shown in the bot­tom chart, on a year over year basis, Indus­trial Pro­duc­tion dropped from 8.3% down to 3.4%.  The last time Indus­trial Pro­duc­tion saw this large of a monthly drop in its y/y read­ing was back in Decem­ber 1960.  So how is the mar­ket doing in the face of all this bleak eco­nomic data?  Fif­teen min­utes into trad­ing, the DJIA is actu­ally up 75 points.  As they would say on the other side of the Atlantic, "C'est la vie."

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