Stalled Out: Dow Finishes Unchanged; NASDAQ, S&P Flat Following Trump Speech

After President Donald J. Trump's speech before the Economic Club of New York, stocks retreated, wiping out gains made earlier in the session. Trump spoke during the noon hour, maintaining a hard line on negotiations with China and the European Union.

The president reiterated the need for fair and reciprocal trade, addressing the unfairness in trading with China and praising his administration for raising tariffs on Chinese imports. As is his style, the president called out the Chinese for stealing intellectual property, subsidizing their own industries at the expense of the US, and dumping products on our shores at under-competitive prices.

Critical of the president's tough approach with the Chinese, the media produced enough negative headlines to send the algorithms into a spasmodic tailspin, selling stocks with abandon. The Dow was up nearly 80 points in early trading, but sold off in the afternoon, eventually finishing unchanged.

It was the first time the Dow had closed unchanged since 2014, and the third time since 2000. According to the Motley Fool, the chance that the Dow Jones Industrial Average would close unchanged for a single day became more difficult when the index adopted decimalization in 2001. Prior to that, advances and declines were measured in eights of a point, a much larger denominator than today's, which is one cent. The article points out that the Dow finished unchanged ten times in the 1990s and four times in just one year: 1979.

With the Dow flattened out for the day along with the other major indices, interest turned to global markets which uniformly reacted with negativity. All Asian markets were lower overnight and European exchanges were also showing declines, though the losses were less than spectacular. Other than Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index - which is a separate case altogether due to the ongoing protests and disruptions - none of the major indices were down more than one percent.

As daylight broke over America's Eastern shores, stock futures were pointing to a negative open. Dow futures were off more than 100 points.

At the Close, Tuesday, November 12, 2019:
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 27,691.49, 0.00 (0.00%)
NASDAQ: 8,486.09, +21.81 (+0.26%)
S&P 500: 3,091.84, +4.83 (+0.16%)
NYSE Composite: 13,387.62, -0.49 (-0.00%)