The extra octane for the market is coming from scuttlebutt that Indra Nooyi, former CEO of Pepsi, is the leading candidate to be the next president of the World Bank. There is no doubt her appointment would be warmly greeted by everyone because of her success at Pepsi and her ability to navigate geopolitics and understand the global economy.

I think in many ways yesterday was the best session for the market in 2019.  There have been sessions with greater moves and even sessions were the big indices climbed out of larger holes, but the market bouncing back after a series of news events that would have crushed investors a month ago.
Consider all the reasons the market could have be down a lot this morning:

• Corporate earnings from JP Morgan (JPM) to Delta (DAL); there wasn’t a lot to cheer when these companies posted results this morning. 
• Economic data saw the PPI number come in weaker than anticipated and the Empire State Manufacturing data saw the slowest growth since May 2017, matching big swoons in other regional manufacturing reports.  
• Comments attributed to Robert Lighthizer that US-China trade talks didn’t yield much progress

Turns out Netflix (NFLX), which was already the stock of the year, became the savior of the day announcing major price hikes ranging from 13% to 18% just days before its scheduled to report earnings.                         

Management understands these hikes jolt subscribers and interrupts growth, which is what happened when the company posted results on July 18, 2016 after price hikes.  The street was looking for 532,000 new US subs but the net number was only 160,000 while internal came in at 2.1 million, missing consensus by four hundred thousand. 

Reaction was swift as the stock was hammered more than 13% on the session.  Those folks that sold surely regretted it soon thereafter as the stock held and then turned higher marching passed $400 a share by the time the rally ran out of steam two years later. 

Markets are trying to break out of their current trading ranges but are struggling to gain traction.  Transportation stocks are holding the market back, the Dow Jones Transportation Average is lower by 0.75%.  The Cloud Computing ETF, SKYY (+2.0%), is helping technology outperform.   

•    The Dow is trading up 130 points, 0.55%, at 24,040
•    S&P 500 is up 23 points, 0.92%, at 2,606 
•    The Nasdaq is up 108 points, 1.58%, at 7,015
•    Russell 2000 is up 5.5 points, 0.39%, at 1,438