Not that it's any secret, but the state of the global economy isn't exactly rosy these days. But only a day after the Fed concluded its monetary policy meetings with noteworthy lack of further quantitative easing, another spate of negative data has painted the U.S. recovery a growing weaker by the day. U.S. stocks markets don't like it, either.
Coming into midday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average
The devil's in the details
As mentioned above, today's bad news came from stateside. News from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia showed manufacturing activity in its region (basically the mid-Atlantic) declined. The news came after a similar survey showed manufacturing also dwindled in the New York area. Additionally, May used-home sales figures also declined. Individually, these figures carry little weight. However, taken as a whole, they paint U.S. recovery as increasingly tepid, which of course has investors concerned, as growth prospects have also soured in China and Europe.
As should be expected, the bad news sent cyclical stocks sharply downward. Shares of aluminum producer Alcoa
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