Will This Be Freaky Friday on Wall Street?

PUBLISHED: May 30 2014 @ 04:00 | Comments (4) | More info about Lou Gutheil

As I sit down to begin this article, Friday is only and hour and a quarter away in London. A few short hours later, it will be business as usual, then off for the weekend. I would suggest that the occasional glance be given to Wall Street during the day, and after the LSE closes. It promises to be an interesting day for several reasons. Take a look at just two.

Continuing Record Highs

The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average keep pushing higher. The S&P has reached new record highs four times in the past week, including today. The index finished yesterday at 1909.78. It rose another 0.54% (10.25) today to close at 1920.03, including a strong finish on the day.

Similarly, as we have discussed this week, the Dow has continued to gain ground and is not positioned where reaching a record high is no longer an unreasonable expectation. The Dow finished up 65.56 (0.39%) and is now only 17 points away from setting a new magic number.

Interestingly, both indices slipped in the early morning until just after 10 am EDT. At that point they accelerated and gained momentum until the markets closed. The question is, of course, “How high will they go?”

The Russell Index Re-balancing

With $5.2 trillion in assets bench-marked, more U.S. institutional funds track the Russell Indices than all other U.S. equity indexes combined. The indices allow investors to track the performance of distinct market segments. The index re-balances on monthly basis on the last trading day of the month. The re-balancing act tomorrow is likely to stimulate some interesting results as shares are sold to create the desired balance. Here is a sampling of shares to be sold.

Company	Ticker	Shares to Sell	% Avg. Vol.	Today’s Close	Target
3M	(NYSE:MMM)	1,167,303	51%	$142.39	$146.53
Allstate	(NYSE:ALL)	1,126,223	47%	$58.30	$62.05
Corning	(NYSE:GLW)	2,817,593	27%	$21.26	$21.85
Caterpillar	(NYSE:CAT)	1,087,645	25%	$102.91	$111.96
Citrix	(NASDAQ:CTXS)	755,983	23%	$61.66	$65.54
Sirius XM	(NASDAQ:SIRI)	5,472,480	10%	$3.32	$4.25
Papa John	(NASDAQ:PZZA)	109,844	25%	$43.13	$53.57

Add to the mix, the EOM economic reports and Friday could be a very interesting investing day.

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