Friends I think we have our answer. For anyone who wondered just why stocks have been rising for the past 6 months, we got our definitive answer over the past two trading sessions. Stocks were going up because of easy money. End of story. The minute there is even a...
Friends I am sure the Federal Reserve Chairman is a very nice guy. I also applaud his attempt to continuously explain Fed policy to the public and not be as “cloak and dagger” as his predecessors. The problem with Dr. Bernanke and his fellow Fed Governors is that they...
Friends Wow, the bulls seem pretty confident that Dr. Bernanke is not going to rain on their parade tomorrow. Stocks climbed all day as the bears just seemed to disappear. Today marks the sixth day in a row of more than a 100 point move in the Dow. Once again, traders...
Friends Call it the case of the battling financial news organizations. After a Wall Street Journal columnist hinted that the message from this week’s Fed meeting will be that Dr. Bernanke and crew will not be hasty in taking the punch bowl away (which led to a hefty...
Friends The volatility continues as does the string of down weeks, as stocks could not build on yesterday’s gains and spent almost the entire day in negative territory. A little hotter than expected Producer Price Index may have stoked the fire, but yesterday’s up...
Friends Wow, volatility is back indeed. After horrendous overnight trading in Japan, futures indicated early this morning that we might be in for an ugly day for the bulls. But decent economic news, including a solid retail sales number and another decent weekly...
Friends Yes indeed, volatility has returned. Trading in stocks lately is beginning to bring back memories of 2011. Today, we began with a 100 plus point move up in the Dow (for no particular reason), but by late morning the gains had evaporated, and selling persisted...
Friends Today’s trading had a bit of a chicken and egg feel to it. First of all, we will acknowledge that overnight trading in Asian and European markets was extremely negative, and the mess that is Japan continues to send conflicting signals, but stocks for the past...
Friends As market participants spent most of the day waiting for Apple to introduce its new operating system (and early reviews are that IOS 7 looks pretty cool), stocks drifted aimlessly throughout the trading session. After last week’s volatility, traders seemed...
Friends The much anticipated non-farm payroll number was somewhat of a best of both worlds or Goldilocks number. Last month 175,000 new jobs were created in the United States (yes, that is better than the number I had guessed, for entertainment purposes only), which...
Friends After yesterday’s drubbing, stocks seemed poised to post a third down day in a row as the Dow was down a spooky 117 points in early trading. But the afternoon brought with it a reversal, as some major technical levels held, and stocks staged an impressive...
Friends Well, it had to end someday. Yes, the streak of up Tuesdays ended today. After twenty Tuesdays in a row of stocks being up, we finally had a down day for the major averages on a Tuesday. The main culprit seems to be the musings of Kansas City Fed Governor...
Friends Friday’s, last day of the month selloff, was a distant memory today as stocks rallied despite overnight chaos in Japanese trading. We get a lot of economic news this week, including the non-farm payroll number on Friday, and today’s ISM manufacturing number...
Friends An asteroid is passing the earth today and it’s “name” is 1998 QE2. Yes, that’s right; its “last name” is QE2. You really can’t make this up. Hopefully, there is not a financial asteroid heading our way named QE2 or QE3 or QE-infinity. Anyway, I digress....
Friends Punch bowl addicted traders were encouraged this morning as the GDP revision and the weekly unemployment claims number both were less than stellar, allowing the reality that bad news is good news once again for buyers of stocks. The “taper” talk, or when will...
