Friends As expected it was a quiet last day of trading for 2011. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished the day down 69 points to close out the year at 12,217. The S&P 500 was down 5 points to close out the year at 1257 which is just a hair below the 200 day moving...

Friends The Italian bond auction, that everyone was waiting on, went fairly well, and combined with an “ok” domestic initial jobless claims number of 381,000 (vs. expectation of about 375,000), traders had enough decent news to stake a rally in stocks. For the day,...

Friends I am back in the saddle today as the markets open up for business in this last week of the year. Today was a total snoozer (and that’s not always a bad thing). Stocks barely moved all day long as the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 2 points for the day...

Friends, Traders (the few that are around today) shrugged off some lackluster domestic economic reports and took stocks higher as we enter the Christmas weekend. Santa did deliver us a nice little rally this week. It will be interesting to see if we can hold it into...

Friends, We had another nice jobless claims number (two weeks in a row) with the 364,000 number being the best we’ve seen in 3 ½ years. Also, the University of Michigan consumer confidence number beat expectations coming in at 69.9 vs. the 67.7 consensus estimate (the...

Friends, After yesterday’s slow grinding 100 point Dow loss, stocks staged a nice rally today (dare I say the beginning of a Santa Claus rally?). Nothing like a couple of nice European bond auctions and quiet European politicians to help spark a little love here...

Friends, The grind into the holidays continues. After a slew of economic numbers, including a flat CPI number this morning, the domestic economic picture, indeed, looks a lot better than most experts would have guessed six months ago. You remember all the calls for a...

Friends, After yesterday’ s drubbing, stocks made a small comeback today buoyed by more positive domestic economic news. A slew of economic numbers were released this morning including a surprisingly good initial jobless claims number (366,000 new claims vs. 390,000),...

Friends, We were enjoying a nice 100 point plus move in the Dow today when traders decided that they did not like the Fed announcement for some reason. What changed? Well, not much. No change in rates until 2013, job market and economic activity slightly better, core...

Friends, It seems that once market participants had some time to think about the “deal” that was announced last Friday in Europe, they decided that there is quite a lot of work left to do. The reality is that at least we are dealing with a continued slowdown in Europe...

Friends, European leaders reached an agreement on a new “fiscal compact” which will begin to address the structural economic problems in Europe including stricter rules on budget deficits and greater consequences for those who break those rules. The framework for the...

Friends, This morning ECB President Mario Draghi went from being Santa Claus to being the Grinch that stole our Holiday rally. After the expected rate cut was announced, along with news that the ECB would ease collateral criteria for loans and allow up to 3 year loans...

Friends As we have been saying, the market’s final direction each day is determined by the last piece of news or rumor. Today as we drifted aimlessly through the afternoon, we got news that the G-20 Nations are considering a $600 billion lending facility to the IMF....

Friends, The direction of the market these days is only as good as the last headline. We were nursing a nice 150 Dow point rally this morning with visions of Eurozone deals by the end of the week dancing in our heads, when news crossed the wires that S&P was going to...