Major Markets

The dog days of summer have set in as market participants seemed to be uninterested in the markets last week.

The major markets traded within a very tight range this last week as they closed within a quarter point, positive or negative, of last week.

After the S&P 500 started the week strong, trading into new intraday highs, the market opened Tuesday back flat on the week. The S&P traded around unchanged the remainder on the week to close virtually flat on the week.

Digging deeper, the sectors closed mixed with the largest loses in Telecom and Utilities. The largest gains were in Materials and Energy.

The varying size of each sector’s capitalization caused the overall index to remain unchanged as the positive sectors compensated for the losses in the smaller ones.

Commodities

The gains in Energy were led largely by the strength in crude oil.

The S&P Crude Oil Index gained 8.7% on the week to bring the index back positive by 4.34% on the year.

Unleaded Gasoline fared even better this last week with a gain of 10.69%. However, the S&P GSCI Unleaded Gasoline Index is still down over 10% on the year.

In other commodities, Silver fell almost 2% on the week while Gold closed with a gain just under a quarter percent.

And speaking of Gold and Silver, the medals have all been handed out. The Top 5 country recipients were USA at number 1, followed by China, Great Britain, Russia and Germany.

And if you’ve ever wondered how much the medals are actually worth, CNN reported that this year’s Gold Medal was made of only 6 grams of actual gold covering 494 grams of silver. As of Friday, that equates to be about $622. Not quite the price you might expect for a lifetime’s achievement.