Friends Central banks around the world continue to provide liquidity in the form of bailouts, guarantees, low interest rates and asset purchases, but there comes a time when the “drugs” just don’t work anymore. You know, how when a patient is continuously given...

Friends It may not have felt like it, but we just enjoyed the best week of the year for stocks, and that is on the heels of last week being the worst week of the year. A little volatility, eh? The uplift throughout the day was mainly attributed to traders who were...

Friends Before Dr. Bernanke even began to give his testimony in front of Congress this morning, markets were encouraged by a somewhat unexpected quarter point rate cut on borrowing in China. Actually, by the time Bernanke testified stocks were already losing a little...

Friends Stocks enjoyed a very nice rally today, as traders leaning negative decided to cover their shorts ahead of Dr. Bernanke’s testimony tomorrow. The bears are also a bit concerned that the European leaders may throw a Hail Mary pass and come up with another...

Friends A slightly better than expected non-manufacturing ISM number (boy we needed a good number) helped buoy stocks modestly today, giving us the first decisively positive day in some time. With nothing new coming out of Europe, trading was quiet and quite light,...

Friends Because traders came in to work today expecting a very difficult stock market (based on how futures were trading last night), a small loss in the averages today almost feels like a win. After last week’s deluge of domestic economic news, we are at the mercy of...

Friends As we know, May ended up being a very difficult month for risk assets with the Dow and the S&P down more than 6% for the month. Well, the first day of June continued the pain. This morning’s release of the government’s non-farm payroll number was a major...