Friends The last trading day of the year is typically pretty dull. Not today. As rumors and reports of a “fiscal cliff” deal bombarded traders, stocks gyrated back and forth in wild fashion. As of this writing, it looks like some sort of deal has been agreed to, and...

Friends All eyes are on the White House as we wait for word on the “fiscal cliff” summit meeting that the President called for this afternoon. The most likely scenario is that some sort of very short-term band aid will be hashed out, leaving both sides their leverage...

Friends As expected, the day after Christmas trading was light and the markets were mostly quiet other than a little spike in oil prices. Stocks simply meandered mostly in negative territory for the day, as there was nothing new for traders to chew on with regards to...

Friends After last night’s embarrassment for Speaker Boehner, stocks sold off today as traders are becoming less convinced that a “fiscal cliff” deal is soon to be had. No, the Speaker could not even garner the votes for his “plan b” from his own troops. As I...

Friends More political wrangling, as the dueling press conferences continue. If it hadn’t already, it is now becoming comical. When all was said and done, traders decided to buy a little bit of yesterday’s dip and stocks staged a modest rally. It seems that market...

Friends Dueling press conferences cast a negative pall on the markets today, as after being encouraged that the “fiscal cliff” talks were going well, traders today showed concern that the talks may not be going quite so well. For the day, the Dow Jones Industrial...

Friends It seems as if the bulls are borrowing from the “fiscal cliff” deal announcement rally, as stocks continue higher despite no real evidence that a deal is imminent. Traders seem convinced that something is going to get settled before Christmas, and the bears...

Friends Stocks rallied today on hopes that the Speaker and the President are making progress with their “fiscal cliff” talks. As we know, the Speaker delivered a proposal to the President on Friday, and again this morning the two met at the White House. The market...

Friends Another day of waiting for politicians to say something intelligent (I’m sorry but writing that just made me laugh). We had our daily dousing of the “they’re getting it done behind the scenes” flames by Speaker Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. If...

Friends As we mentioned the other day, the Fed produced a statement and then a Bernanke press conference today in which the policy of asset purchases is indeed alive and well. As we expected, the Fed Chairman announced that once operation twist is done at the end of...

Friends The markets seemed to be signaling most of the day that traders believed that there might be some kind of deal in the making with regards to the fiscal cliff. Stocks as measured by the Dow were up more than 100 points for most of the early afternoon. Despite...

Friends Traders continue to hold out hope that the behind the scenes talks are going much smoother than the sound bites that are heard daily on the fiscal cliff issue. Perhaps the President and the Speaker are making progress out of the glare of the camera lights. We...

Friends Let’s start with the economic numbers that we got this morning. The non-farm payroll number baffled analysts, as what was supposed to be a “suppressed by Sandy” weak number came in much better than expected with 146,000 new jobs created in November. On the...

Friends Traders seemed content to stay on the sidelines today, as we wait on the all-important non-farm payroll report due out tomorrow morning. Consensus estimates are zeroing in on 80,000 new jobs having been created in November (much smaller than last month), and...