US Economic Expansion Trumps Ukraine Fears as DJIA, S&P 500 Rally on ISM Data

Stocks on Wall Street began the first full week of May trading deep in negative territory, as investors grappled with how best to modulate their concerns over the rising death toll in Eastern Ukraine, as clashes between authorities in Kiev and separatists to the east took yet another serious turn over the weekend.

By midday, however, it had become clear that Equities.com’s George Brooks was asking some prescient questions in his pre-market missive, as the Institute for Supply Management announced the results for its April survey of non-manufacturing activity in the US. The 55.2 reading came in ahead of the average of analysts’ expectations for 54, a sequential improvement on March’s reading of 53.1, and was an important psychological support as it seemed to vindicate the oft-invoked thesis that harsh winter conditions had been the principal obstacle to US economic growth in the beginning of 2014.

Results for Monday, May 5, 2014

?     Standard & Poor’s 500: +0.19 percent to 1,884.66 points

?     NASDAQ: +0.34 percent to 4,138.06

?     Dow Jones Industrial Average: +0.11 points to 16,530.55

Our Top Stories

?     Senior Editor Joel Anderson has compiled a must-read list of some of the best jokes one can hope to make at the expense of economists.

?     Ahead of this month’s Metals & Minerals Investment Conference in midtown Manhattan, Executive Editor Henry Truc had an opportunity to check in with one of the event’s more intrepid speakers, the Mercenary Geologist Mickey Fulp.

?     Senior Editor Jacob Harper has his own take on Gary Turk’s now-viral spoken word piece called “Look Up”, wherein the poetic form is used to question the relationship between alienation and social media.

?     Guild Investment Management explores the potential impact on food prices in the event that 2014 turns out to be an El Niño year, a meteorological event believed by US officials to be well within the realm of possibility.

?     Fisher Investments checks in to deflate the tech-bubble-anxiety bubble.

?     Pink-sheet investors will not want to miss Joel Anderson’s conversation with R. Cromwell Coulson, the President, Director, and CEO of OTC Markets Group.

The Day in Stocks

?     After pharmaceutical juggernaut Pfizer’s (PFE) advances at AstraZeneca (AZN) were rejected by the latter’s shareholders on Friday, the company’s stock dipped in Monday trading with some extra help from the release of a disappointing first-quarter earnings report.

?     With the expiration of social media heavy Twitter’s (TWTR) share lockup, Senior Editor Jacob Harper offers the two most likely explanations for the conspicuous lack of selling activity, as the stock ended negligibly lower by the bell, and on unremarkable volume.

?     Equities.com’s very own Francis Gaskins, the seer of the IPO market, has the roundup of this week’s offerings.

?     Pipeline stocks were the best performing segment of the oil and gas industry by the conclusion of Monday’s session. Senior Editor Michael Teague is bullish on US midstream infrastructure spending, and found this fairly concise video explaining how pipelines are built and installed.