Friends Another difficult day for stocks in this initial week of trading of 2016. Overnight we had news of the nut case in North Korea testing what was claimed to be an H-bomb. In addition continued currency devaluation in China and the seemingly never ending plunge...
Friends Things were a lot calmer today in the markets. Sure, we had some seesawing up and down, but for the most part it was a calm drift to nowhere. Pessimism for stocks appears to be growing as we move our way through the first week of trading for the year, and the...
Friends I wanted to take some time this week to wrap up 2015, but today’s stock market actions dictates that we leave 2015 behind (we’ll go into detail in the quarterly outlook which will be coming soon), and get right into the action of 2016. News of a collapse in...
Friends Again, another quiet day on this last day of trading for 2015, and yet again another day where the bulls never showed up. Stocks spent the day drifting lower and lower and lower into negative territory, so much so that the market averages as measured by the...
Friends Just as the sellers seemed to have disappeared yesterday, the buyers appear to have closed the books on 2015. It wasn’t so much that there was a strong selling emphasis as there just didn’t seem to be any buyers around. Subsequently, stocks drifted further...
Friends So much for a quiet week. Yes, trading was somewhat light, but the bulls were out in force right from the opening bell, and all the way until the end of the trading session. On the economic front both the Case-Shiller housing price index and the consumer...
Friends It isn’t a real surprise that trading in stocks today was very quiet. From the get go, the tone to the market had a negative bias, but there really wasn’t much enthusiasm for either side of the trading ledger in today’s session. After stocks drifted to a...
Friends No, it’s not officially the Santa Rally, but it appears he may be heading this way. For the third day in a row, stocks found some buying enthusiasm from market participants. I wish I could provide a brilliant analysis and reasoning as to why this week’s rally...
Friends As we close in on the Christmas holiday, the bulls seem determined to salvage something during this joyous season. Stocks climbed slowly but surely as the trading session unfolded and by the close the market averages were sporting some nice gains. On the...
Friends After last week’s unmitigated disaster in the stock market, it appeared the bulls had organized their shopping list and were poised to do some buying this morning as trading began. Indeed, stocks saw a robust opening as the Dow climbed more than 150 points,...
Friends It finally happened. The Fed has actually raised interest rates. Yes, it’s only ¼%, but it marks the first time the Fed has raised rates in 9 years and the first time we have been off of the emergency 0% interest rate policy (ZIRP) in almost 7 years. Market...
Friends We are officially in Fed watch mode. The FOMC two day meeting began today and we’ll get the decision tomorrow. Of course, the expectation is that the Fed will raise rates a quarter of a point, then try to “soften” the blow by maintaining that the glide path...
Friends Stocks had quite a roller coaster ride today as traders seemed to spend the day chasing oil prices and junk bonds. As we mentioned on Friday, the collapse in oil prices is putting huge stress on the high yield “junk” bond market, as debt of energy companies...
Friends There is a lot to discuss today, but since it’s Friday I will try to keep it short. We can expand on it all next week when the Fed is scheduled to meet. Today’s downturn in stocks was fueled by a drubbing in the high yield debt markets and the continued plunge...
Friends Once again it was a volatile day for stocks, but today the bulls were able to emerge with the victory. Stocks spent time in both positive and negative territory once again, and despite lower oil prices, energy shares provided much of the upside in the market...
