Friends Stocks limped into the end of the quarter, but after all the hand wringing (I know I did my share) and concern about how bad things are, it turned out to be a good one for the bulls. Sure, the economy is slowing as we speak and there is a fiscal cliff looming,...

Friends Traders shook off some disturbing economic news today and bid up stocks as we come to the end of the 3rd quarter. First, we got the final revision of the 2nd quarter GDP which settled at up only 1.3% (remember, at first look we were around 2%). We also...

Friends Yesterday they were demonstrating in Spain, today it was Greece (we’ve seen this one before), and once again traders decided that they just didn’t want to buy stocks today. Actually, ever since the big rally on Fed day a couple of weeks ago, stocks have found...

Friends Today is a great reminder that Central Bankers and Politicians may have grandiose plans, but eventually people that are affected by those plans just might have something to say about them. The austerity protest that turned violent in Madrid, Spain this...

Friends The news dominating the day was that Apple “only” sold 5 million iPhone 5’s this weekend. You know why they only sold 5 million iPhone 5’s this weekend? Because that’s all the iPhone 5’s they had. That seems like a good problem to have. Gee, I can’t make...

Friends Traders seemed to be waiting all day for the much ballyhooed rebalancing of the S&P 500 at the close of trading. As it turned out, stocks had another day of drifting until the last ten minutes, and even then it wasn’t much of a move. For the day, the Dow Jones...

Friends Nothing happened today. No, I really mean it, absolutely nothing happened in the markets today. The weekly new unemployment claims number was a non-event. The number has remained under 400,000 but just barely for months now. No news there. Stocks just seem to...

Friends The bulls attempted to take stocks considerably higher early in the trading session, but by the end of the day they couldn’t muster much of an advance. The big story the last couple of days has been the $10 collapse in oil prices after last week’s run up. Of...

Friends It was another very quiet day of trading, as after last week’s bevy of news, traders seem to be searching for a reason to buy or sell. The bulls got their excitement last week when Dr. Bernanke and the Fed went “all in”, and the bears still seem shell shocked...

Friends Well it is fitting that the last Monday of the Summer was negative for stocks. Nearly every Monday (14 out of the last 15) this summer has had a selling bias and after last week’s fireworks, it is not surprising that we would give a little back early this...

Friends The bears brought a knife to the fight. Dr. Bernanke brought a bazooka. Sure, traders expected the Fed Chairman to announce some type of QE today, but what they got was much more than they bargained for. The FOMC statement that came out at 11:30 our time,...

Friends Other than Apple rolling out the iPhone 5, today was rather void of news, and markets were rather quiet as a result. Remember, today was day one of the Fed meeting. Tomorrow is day two and we’ll get the announcement late in the morning and Dr. Bernanke’s press...

Friends I’d like to begin today’s note by first saying that we are very much thinking about those who were lost 11 years ago today. We will never forget them or that fateful day. Now we’ll turn our attention to the markets. Stocks recovered Monday’s losses during...

Friends It must be Monday, the stock market was down. As we have seen all summer, stocks seem to rally on Fridays and then sell off on Mondays. There really is no magic explanation, we’ll just assume that traders basically start each week scared to death of what might...