Friends Stocks had a lousy day on this final trading session for April, as the selloff began at the opening bell and got worse as the day wore on. Traders seemed totally uninterested in doing any buying with all the mixed signals they have had to absorb this week. Oil...

Friends We have discussed for some time now that the Fed would like to raise interest rates at least one time this year to get the Fed Funds rate off of zero percent, which they perceive as more of an emergency monetary policy stance. Unfortunately for Chair Yellen...

Friends Stocks experienced a bit of volatility today, seesawing between positive and negative territory and being influenced by the rumor mill. After a decent positive opening, news that the Iranians had seized a U.S. ship of some sort, sent stocks tumbling into...

Friends We have a week chocked full of earnings releases and economic data in store for us, not to mention an FOMC meeting. We start with Apple's earnings after the close today, and then the earnings reports keep on coming. On the economic front we get a look at first...

Friends Despite the feeling of doom that seemed to spread over the market as we entered the current earnings season, stocks have fared quite well, despite the somewhat mixed results we have seen from U. S. Corporations. It seems that since expectations had been...

Friends Traders "interpreted" some major corporate earnings reports from the likes of Coca-Cola and McDonalds as positive, and sent stocks higher after an early morning decline. As we have pointed out, how stocks react to an earnings report depends a lot on the...

Friends As we suspected, the volatility continues, as today stocks reversed an early rally and spent the remainder of the trading session in decidedly negative territory. The early read on corporate earnings seems to be that companies are still finding ways to bring...

Friends As China lowered their reserve requirements over the weekend (more QE/stimulus), stock futures perked up and set us up for a positive opening as the week began. Basically, stocks recovered the losses that they incurred on Friday, but remember this week and...

Friends Overnight news out of China, weakness in Europe, Greece as always, and problems with Bloomberg machines, set the tone for a weak opening for stocks, and that is what we got. As the morning rolled on, stocks continued to fall and by early afternoon the Dow was...

Friends Stocks drifted aimlessly throughout the trading session today despite another decent earnings report from a financial institution (Citi in this case), a surprisingly bullish report from Netflix, and a few successful IPO's including ETSY and Party City. Traders...

Friends For the second day in a row stocks reacted positively to earnings reports, whether good or not. That is a theme that the bulls would like to see develop. With lowered expectations perhaps we'll get investors thinking "well those earnings aren't as bad as...

Friends With good earnings from a couple of money center banks, JP Morgan and Wells Fargo, and a decent report from Johnson & Johnson , traders celebrated a nice beginning to what figures to be a challenging earnings season. Stocks spent the day in positive...

"For the stock market, 2015 is beginning to remind us of 2011‐ a lot of volatility and not much direction. Stocks are facing many headwinds, including, valuation, a tepid economic backdrop, suspicious corporate earnings growth, and the double edged swords of lower...

Friends A restructuring deal announced by GE this morning, which includes an enormous stock buyback, seemed to spark the animal spirits just a bit as stocks enjoyed a nice day of gains. Of note is that the Dow recaptured the 18,000 level and the S&P was able to...