A Familiar Foe

Stocks slumped today against two very familiar foes: oil prices and interest rates. Light, sweet crude oil rose $2.14 after another report that supply is low. This also raised concerns about the upcoming summer travel season. How far will prices climb before that road trip to Disney World? Perhaps the Fed will address this growing concern in its meeting next week. Along with other important issues, the Fed is suspected of raising short-term rates next week to prevent inflation. On the other end of things, Bayer and Merck are going head to head in a bidding war over German drug maker, Schering. The bid is currently at $19.7 billion. This should be an interesting acquisition to follow in the next few weeks. DJIA: -47.14 Nasdaq: -3.20 S&P 500: -3.37