Painful January

Painful January

Friends Ok, glad that’s over. January 2014 was a difficult month. It was the first down January we have had since 2010. One thing we can say about 2014 so far, volatility is back. After dropping more than 230 Dow points by midday, stocks tried to stage a late...

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Painful January

Stocks Bounce Back

Friends Stocks rallied today, helped by a better than expected first look at 4th quarter GDP (3.2% vs. 3% consensus estimate), and a bevy of pretty darn good earnings reports. Traders seemed to direct their focus away from emerging market currency issues for one day...

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Painful January

Dow Down 5% YTD After Difficult Session

Friends January is turning into a bit of a mess, isn’t it? Last night’s state of the union address was not market moving, but futures were buoyed overnight by action in Turkey, where they raised rates to defend their currency. It worked for about 10 seconds. By the...

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Painful January

Off To Another Bad Start To The Week

Friends After last week’s struggles, stocks endured a very volatile day. After a nice pop on the open, stocks gave up those gains and fell to negative territory by late morning. The bulls gathered themselves and staged another rally in the early afternoon, only to run...

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Painful January

Market Suffers A Difficult Week

Friends Stocks fell for the 4th day in a row, leaving the Dow down more than 3% for the week. In addition this was the worst day for the Dow since June of last year. The reason for all the weakness this week has mainly been attributed to the turmoil in emerging...

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Painful January

The China Syndrome

Friends Fueled by overnight weakness in China, stocks suffered a difficult day. China’s problems revolve around weakening manufacturing data and an economic slowdown which has lingered for some time now. Domestically, the weekly jobless claims were harmless, and LEI...

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Painful January

Snow Day

Friends On this the second day of trading for 2014, stocks saw a little more volatility as the bulls stepped up to the plate in the early afternoon pushing the Dow up 70 points, only to back away once again in the last half hour of trading. With the weather problems...

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Painful January

Another Mixed Result

Friends We have been seeing several cases of stocks priced for perfection suffering sell-offs despite what seems to be decent, if not good earnings reports. We suspected that this might occur this earnings season. Dow components Johnson & Johnson , Verizon,...

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Painful January

Mixed Results

Friends The Dow Jones Industrial Average masked a very weak day for stocks. On the economic front, housing starts, as expected were down, and consumer sentiment slipped in December, but industrial production was encouraging. Once again, mixed results. Speaking of...

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Painful January

Follow Through

Friends A couple more good reports from major money center banks and another good day for stocks. Also helping was a better than expected Empire State Manufacturing number which had been lagging other regions of the country, and a hotter, but expected PPI number....

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Painful January

Bounce Back

Friends What a difference a day makes. Buyers seemed interested again today, whether emboldened by decent earnings from a couple of major banks, or just doing a little bargain hunting, stocks traded in positive territory for the entire session. It will be interesting...

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Painful January

Lousy Jobs Report

Friends Just when investors were beginning to feel a little frisky, the government released a miserable non-farm payroll number this morning. Analysts had been falling all over themselves raising their “guess” for the number of jobs created in December. The consensus...

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Painful January

2014 1st Quarter Outlook

“so as we look to 2014 and anticipate the hand-off from the Fed to the growing economy, it is within reason to think that the bull market in stocks has moved from doubt and disbelief to at least acceptance” Click the link below to read our full comments. 1st Quarter...

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2014 1st Quarter Outlook

2014 1st Quarter Outlook

"so as we look to 2014 and anticipate the hand-off from the Fed to the growing economy, it is within reason to think that the bull market in stocks has moved from doubt and disbelief to at least acceptance". Click the link below to read our full comments. 1st Quarter...

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Painful January

Jobs and Minutes

Friends As we prepare for the onslaught of earnings season, today’s focus was economic news including a very strong ADP private payroll number which came in at 238,000 new jobs created in December vs. the consensus estimate of 205,000. The expectations for a good...

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