Friends Well that’s a wrap on 2013. As I pointed out yesterday, it was quite an amazing year. Investments thought to be safe (quality bonds) and those thought to protect from central banks devaluing currencies (gold), were the years worst performers. Most bonds lost...

Friends With just one more trading day left in the year, despite today’s lack of activity, it’s been an amazing year. A year ago at this time, we were concerned with the “fiscal cliff”, budget battles, the debt crisis, Obamacare, a potential government shutdown (which...

Friends The Santa Claus rally continues, though trading was quiet as expected on this half day Christmas Eve session. By the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 63 points to finish the day at 16,358. The S&P 500 was up 5 to close at 1833. Gold was up $7...

Friends After yesterday’s pause, the bulls rallied the Dow to an early triple digit gain, only to see some of the gains whittled away by the close. Market participants were encouraged by the final revision to third quarter GDP which came in at a surprisingly robust...

Friends Like a baseball team one out away from a World Series win (Texas Ranger fans can relate), the bears had the Champagne chilled and ready to pop as the 1:00 CST hour FOMC statement approached. Yes, indeed, the Fed announced the beginning of the tapering process....

Friends As expected, traders were reluctant to do much before the release of the Fed statement and subsequent Bernanke presser tomorrow. Will the Fed announce a tapering schedule and how will the market react whether they do or not? It should be an interesting day....

Friends Traders were feeling a little frisky today as they wait for the 2 day Fed meeting to conclude on Wednesday. Overnight, the futures had been indicating a lower opening for stocks, but after rough sessions in Asia, a rebound in European trading emboldened...

Friends With a benign PPI number being the only economic data point to deal with this morning, traders seemed uninterested today as stocks traded within a tight range. After a surprisingly good November, the first half of December has been very lackluster at best....

Friends The pullback continues, as stocks suffered losses once again today. The weekly jobless claims number was worse than expected, while the retail sales number was actually a little better than expected. Perhaps we are getting an early look as to how stocks will...

Friends Today the bears finally inflicted some damage. After a couple of soft weeks of trading, the bears had really not made much headway in terms of a market correction, but despite the “budget deal” out of Congress, stocks showed quite a bit of weakness today. Both...

Friends Six out of the last seven trading days have seen stocks looking somewhat weary. If not for last Friday’s rally, we would be talking about a measurable (but not significant, yet) pullback. Sure, market averages are still hanging around all-time highs, but the...

Friends The bulls were not really able to extend Friday’s rally (the rally that erased the losses that had mounted during the week), as trading was extremely quiet and volatility pretty much non-existent. Stocks did end on the positive side of the ledger, but the...

Friends Well, the bears were caught with their hand in the cookie jar as the jobs report threaded the needle. Goldilocks like, the 203,000 new jobs created in November was not too hot for the “afraid the Fed will taper” crowd, and good enough for the “the economy is...

Friends Stocks fell for the fifth straight session, and the fourth in a row to begin the month of December. Domestic economic data got the ball rolling this morning with a better than expected 3rd quarter GDP revision. The number came in at 3.6% annualized compared to...