Mon 4/30/12 4:42 PM – Stocks Down, But Not Much

Stocks finished lower by 0.4% today (S&P 500 index) which was actually a pretty good performance considering
Europe was down today
Apple, which because of its size has tremendous influence on the S&P 500 index was down 3% today
Stocks had run up nearly 4% in the previous 3 days
Regional ISM manufacturing indexes were all below expectations

Tomorrow brings the national ISM manufacturing index report. If that is weak, and it almost certainly will be and if the jobs report Friday is below exectations which has been the trend the last few weeks we will most likely see economists lower their economic growth forecasts for the current quarter. That would be good for bonds and not so good for stocks.