Friends Reports of a downed Malaysian airliner near the Ukraine/Russian border sent stocks tumbling midday and throughout the rest of the trading session. A flight to safety ensued with treasury bonds and gold both rallying and the volatility index spiking. The...
Friends Once again, it is still early in earnings season, but traders seem impressed by the early returns, as results for financials and tech companies have been better than expected and the shares of these companies seem to not have been overpriced after all. It’s...
Friends Fed Chair Yellen’s testimony was a bit of a news maker, but traders seemed uninterested as volatility was light and stocks barely moved throughout the session. In her written statement, Ms. Yellen mentioned some frothiness is High Yield Bonds and some of the...
Friends Led by the banks, stocks rallied from the opening bell this morning and stayed in positive territory for the entire trading session. Actually after the initial 100 point plus surge in the Dow, stocks basically flat lined at that level for the rest of the day....
Friends Markets were a little bit calmer today as the bears weren’t able to capitalize on the momentum they had built during the week. Yes, it was the worst week we have seen in a while, but when all is said and done, it could have been worse. By the close, the Dow...
Friends The Fed minutes released today indicated that they will be concluding the quantitative easing program in October. So, yes, the taper should remain on schedule and the punch bowl will finally be taken away. Now, that does not mean that they intend to raise...
Friends If the often predicted correction in stocks is finally upon us, no one told traders today. Stocks had an upward bias from the start despite the fact that President Obama had announced last evening that there would be military air strikes in Iraq. As the...
Friends Today’s action reminds me a little of earlier in the year when the high flying momentum stocks lost some of their luster. We saw these same types of stocks feel the brunt of today’s selling. NASDAQ was down well over 1% for the session while the Dow and the...
Friends After last week’s economic fireworks, we begin to focus on earnings season and how companies are faring in this confusing environment. Remember, there were a whole lot of excuses about bad weather in the first quarter, and that won’t fly in the second quarter....
Friends The jobs report was impressive. 288,000 new jobs were created in June vs. the consensus estimate of 211,000. The unemployment rate fell to 6.1%. For all the flack that the Federal Reserve has taken, one must admit that we have been creating jobs in this...
Friends Well after yesterday’s move, trading was back to the 2014 norm, as volume was light, volatility was virtually non-existent and stocks drifted aimlessly throughout the session. This morning’s ADP private sector employment number was much better than expected,...
Friends Wow, the bulls caught the bears flat footed on this first trading session of the 3rd quarter, and pushed stocks decisively higher. After 51 trading days without a move of 1% or more, today’s action looked like that streak could be broken. Well that didn’t...
Friends The final trading session of the quarter was similar to many of the other trading sessions of the quarter- mostly quiet and calm. Stocks spent most of the session in negative territory, but it seemed likely attributable to the lack of desire by traders to make...
Friends We did see a little more volatility this week, but today was mostly uneventful. Stocks spent most of the day in negative territory, only to rally a little into the close. By the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 5 points to finish the day at...
Friends Despite a benign jobless claims number and an OK Personal Income and Outlay report, the bears got the upper hand in early trading and stocks tumbled 80 Dow points as the session began. But while the bears were watching the U.S. lose to Germany in the World Cup...
