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...
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...
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...
Friends Stocks broke their 3 day losing streak and gained enough ground to almost erase the early in the year losses. Unless tomorrow produces a big move either way, the first 5 days of trading may end up not giving much indication of direction for the market. The...
Friends We seemed to get everyone back to work today, except those in the frozen Midwestern part of the country, but the action didn’t really pick up much. Stocks had a first good half hour of trading but gave back nearly triple digit gains on the Dow after a somewhat...
Friends Well, 2014 has begun, and stocks stumbled coming out of the starting blocks. One day does not represent much of anything, considering many were waiting to take some profits until after the first of the year so as not to have to pay taxes until next year...
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...
