Financial Review

…Stocks drop. April stock indices post small gains. Sprint and T-Mobile announce merger, maybe. Crude oil near 4-year high. PCE inflation hits 2% target. Budget deficit climbs. AZ teacher walkout continues. Financial Review by Sinclair Noe for 04-30-2018 DOW – 148 = 24,163 SPX – 21 = 2648 NAS – 53 = 7066 RUT – 14 = 1541 10 Y – .02 = 2.94% OIL + .47 = 68.57 GOLD – 7.70 = 1315.90   Stocks started the session strong – the Dow Industrials were up nearly 200 points in early trading but then the gains faded and faded some more. For the month, the Dow is up 0.25%, cutting its year-to-date loss to 2.3%. The S&P is up 0.27% in April, and down 1% in 2018, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq has tacked on 0.04% return this month, with a year-to-date advance of 2.4%. April’s gains have come as more than half of the S&P 500’s companies have posted first-quarter results, with 79% of those names beating Wall Street’s expectations for earnings. Companies that have beaten profit estimates have seen their shares rise by a paltry 0.2 per