MARKET RALLY CRUMBLES IN THE FINAL MINUTES OF THE DAY: Here's What You Need To Know

thenews 2013.02.28 20:58

Halfway through the day, markets were up. The Dow was up as much as 75 point. Stocks were about to close at a new highs. But the rally disappeared.

First the scoreboard:

Dow: 14,054, -21.2 pts, -0.2 percent
S&P 500: 1,514, +0.0 pts, +0.0 percent

NASDAQ: 3,160, +0.4 pts, +0.0 percent

And now the top stories:

The Dow and S&P closed at a new post-crisis, bull-market high again. Both indices are very near their all-time highs. The Dow closed at its all-time high of 14,164 on October 9, 2007. The S&P closed at its all-time high of 1,565 that same day.

Meanwhile, the we have reached the deadline for the sequester. In other words, $85 billion worth of Federal budget cuts will begin to ripple across the economy tomorrow.

There were two big economic reports today. First was the revision to Q4 GDP. It was revised to +0.1 percent from -0.1 percent a month ago. However, it was still worse than expectation. Even worse, the personal consumption component was revised down.