Market comments for Oct. 15th, 2010

The big news today for me was Univ. of Michigan's Consumer Confidence number. It came in at 67.9 vs. 68.2 for September. So it is clearly lower. Market Expectations were for it to come in at 68.5. Other data released was CPI, which came in at +0.1% and Core CPI which came in at 0%. That is one of the reasons there will not be an increase in Social Security checks in 2011, there is no inflation according to these numbers which have been steady near zero, for most of the year.

Retail Sales improved +0.6% for September, was due to large purchase items they say. Expectations were for them to be 0.2%. Well it wasn't me that bought a large ticket item, just a small cute poodle. :)

Not much to crow about today for the Bulls as the market has dropped somewhat. The Dow is down about 25 points at the time of this post.

And as a Public Service announcement, today all late filers must file taxes which are due for State and Federal taxes. They must be postmarked with today's date in order to avoid late penalties.