hr: Money

In an age of volatility, people look for avenues to invest their money. When it seems that one avenue is not doing well, other avenues gain prominence. To be sure, those who invest for the long term don’t base their decisions on short term variations. But those players whose job it is to speculate, switch their underlying assets for investment based on fluctuations that can have a very small time frame.

Which is why, when oil prices were somewhat weaker on Thursday, investors chose options liek the stock market. As a consequence, the Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) increased by 0.7%, and Standard & Poor’s 500 (SPX) index gain 0.6%. Similarly, the Nasdaq increased by a full 1%.

Timothy Ghriskey, chief investment officer at Solaris Asset Management, said that the earnings of companies other than those in the financial sector, were more or less in line with expectations, and that this was what was keeping stocks in a reasonable upward trent.

This confidence was increased when Microsoft and Amgen reported healthy figures of sales and profits. This was increased by the dollar growing stronger against the Euro and the Yen. Consequently, since stocks were more attractive, the prices of bonds fell since they give low returns albeit with lower risk.