February 8th, 2012 Market Recap with Look at Leading Sectors

Another accumulation day for the market today brings the total to 8 in the last 17 sessions for the NASDAQ. not too bad at all.

A lot of earnings highlights today: Visa, Cisco, Panera, Groupon, Buffalo Wild Wings, amongst others. For the details head over to today's IBD Market wrap up.

The good stuff:

• This is why the Dow Jones Industrials index is worthless (Bespoke)
• The end of money-market funds? (SmartMoney)

Most interesting thought of the day comes from this great piece, Consumer Credit and the American Conundrum (ZeroHedge):

Individuals go to work to produce a good or service for which they are paid a finite amount of money for. With that income they pay taxes which leaves them with discretionary income from which to live on. Pay the rent, utilities, insurance and healthcare, food, clothes and put gas in the car and that pretty much consumes the majority of the paycheck. Today, the situation is quite different and a harbinger of potentially bigger problems ahead. The consumer is no longer turning to credit to leverage UP consumption - they are turning to credit to maintain their current living needs.

I am no expert on economics but this makes logical sense to me and I don't think it could have been broken down any cleaner. A fantastic read for sure.

And here is a nice graph showing the leadership sectors thus far in 2012 (StockCharts.com). Defensive sectors consumer staples, healthcare, and utilities are lagging the market YTD while the others lead.

Whether or not Greece has an effect on the market this week remains to be seen. Apparently an announcement is due out any day but no one has yet to see anything come across the wire beyond crazy headlines like these.

Hope this rally is treating your portfolio well. Stay frosty out there and I will see you back here tomorrow!