Another Friday fade wasn’t enough last week to reverse the
market’s momentum, as stocks held on to a 1% gain for the five-day stretch,
despite slipping in the final session. The Dow Jones Industrial Average
finished the week slightly below a new record high reached Wednesday. As has
been the case numerous times in the recent past, stocks fell Friday and
investors sold down some positions ahead of a weekend of potentially renewed
geopolitical tension.

Despite the release of mostly positive economic data, particularly
on Friday, traders say that escalating tensions in Ukraine are causing
investors to hesitate. In recent days, insurgents reportedly have shot down
Ukrainian helicopters, and Russia warned Ukraine Friday of “catastrophic
consequences” unless it halted a military operation against pro-Russian
insurgents in the eastern part of the country.

During a week of low trading volume, the Dow finished up 0.9%,
or 151 points, to 16,512.89. On Wednesday, it hit an all-time high of
16,580.84. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index increased nearly 18 to 1881.14.
The Nasdaq Composite index added 48, or 1.2%, to 4123.90.

Friday, the Labor Department said American job growth in April
was the biggest in more than two years. At the same time, the unemployment rate
fell to 6.3% last month from 6.7% in March, a low not seen since the bad old
days of September 2008. Payrolls grew by 288,000 from March and trounced
expectations of about 210,000 to 220,000. There was some confusion in equity
markets caused by the bond market’s rise in the face of Friday’s strong jobs
report. Some argued that the data below the headline numbers, such as a decline
in the participation rate, weren’t as good.

The problems in Ukraine “seem to be accelerating from
rhetoric to reality,” says Jason Weisberg, a partner at Seaport
Securities. That seemed to spook investors Friday. Troops are on the move,
aircraft have been shot down, and suddenly things have worsened, he says.

“It seems like on every Friday since mid-February there has
been a partial or full selloff,” says one investment strategist. That
suggests traders are unwilling to hold stocks during the weekend. If Ukraine
weren’t an issue, bond yields would have crashed through 3% instead of falling,
as they did Friday. (Bond prices move inversely to yields.)

Stock investors have to be wondering about a clarification
here.  Maybe the Ukraine issue will fade
in the face of more good news on the economic front, but it’s hard to see how
the situation will improve.

The data, at least, were good, says Michael Shaoul, chairman of
Marketfield Asset Management. The April figures are strong enough to silence
fears about the economy’s weakness in January and February. “There’s no
sense that the economy is decelerating,” he says.

(Source: Barrons Online).