Markets Continue Dull Streak; Germany Slow Go on Gold Move

How dull is this market?

The Dow Jones Industrials hit their lows of the day just minutes into trading, losing 66 points, then rallied off that until stabilizing - though still in the red - around 11:00 am ET.

From that point until the close, the index traded in a range of just 25 points.

This is what happens when headline-scanning algos do 80% of the trading. When there's no news, nothing happens. So, if you're trading on fundamentals - things like price-earnings ratios, comparative advantage, free cash flow, etc. - you can just sit and wait until your particular stock of choice latches itself to a broad rally or makes some headline-grabbing news.

And, if that's what's become of our "free" markets, good luck, because the computers will beat you every time. They can find and scan a headline, react and trade in a matter of seconds, or, in much less the time an average web page takes to load.

Now, is there any reason at all for individual investors to trade stocks? One would believe no.

About all that was not moving the market today were a series of equally dull economic reports, like the CPI, at 0.0%. There's no inflation (really?) and no deflation, which, unless one knew better, would be defined as stagflation (or maybe lackflation).

The NAHB Housing Market Index remained steady at 47, whatever that means; industrial production bumped up 0.3%, which was down from last month's reading of an increase of 1.0%, and capacity utilization improved from 78.7% to 78.8%.

Outside of Goldman Sachs' (GS) huge earnings and revenue beat and JP Morgan's (JPM) narrow beat ex-one-time-charges (but of course), what may have put a pall over the session was the World Bank lowering its global growth (that's a joke, son) projection from 3.0% to 2.4%.

Seriously, the sloped-browed, slack-jawed dunces at the World Bank don't have a crystal ball, but, for some unholy reason, people believe they know what they're doing. Some of us are dubious. But, then again, some of us don't trust anything that comes out of the mouth of politicians or bankers or even stock analysts.

Ho-hum. It seems even the bright-minded Germans, who shook things up a little yesterday by wanting some of their gold back, really don't want it all that badly, after all. GATA reports that Germany will take all of seven years to repatriate some 300 tons of its gold from the Federal Reserve in New York. It will likely take a shorter period of time to remove all of its gold - 374 tons - from the vaults in Paris, but it plans on keeping whatever is in the London vaults there indefinitely, amounting of 13% of all its gold.

The plan is to hold 50% of its gold at home, the rest in London and New York. La-de-dah.

Dow 13,511.08, -23.81 (0.18%)
NASDAQ 3,117.54, +6.76 (0.22%)
S&P 500 1,472.57, +0.23 (0.02%)
NYSE Composite 8,710.22, -22.88 (0.26%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,648,059,375
NYSE Volume 3,198,232,750
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 2775-3605
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 263-10
WTI crude oil: 94.24, +0.96
Gold: 1,683.20, -0.70
Silver: 31.54, +0.013