Friends Stocks rallied today on hopes that the Speaker and the President are making progress with their “fiscal cliff” talks. As we know, the Speaker delivered a proposal to the President on Friday, and again this morning the two met at the White House. The market...
Friends Another day of waiting for politicians to say something intelligent (I’m sorry but writing that just made me laugh). We had our daily dousing of the “they’re getting it done behind the scenes” flames by Speaker Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. If...
Friends As we mentioned the other day, the Fed produced a statement and then a Bernanke press conference today in which the policy of asset purchases is indeed alive and well. As we expected, the Fed Chairman announced that once operation twist is done at the end of...
Friends The markets seemed to be signaling most of the day that traders believed that there might be some kind of deal in the making with regards to the fiscal cliff. Stocks as measured by the Dow were up more than 100 points for most of the early afternoon. Despite...
Friends Traders continue to hold out hope that the behind the scenes talks are going much smoother than the sound bites that are heard daily on the fiscal cliff issue. Perhaps the President and the Speaker are making progress out of the glare of the camera lights. We...
Friends Let’s start with the economic numbers that we got this morning. The non-farm payroll number baffled analysts, as what was supposed to be a “suppressed by Sandy” weak number came in much better than expected with 146,000 new jobs created in November. On the...
Friends Traders seemed content to stay on the sidelines today, as we wait on the all-important non-farm payroll report due out tomorrow morning. Consensus estimates are zeroing in on 80,000 new jobs having been created in November (much smaller than last month), and...
Friends It was a very quiet day for the markets with little volatility and volume. Stocks vacillated back and forth between positive and negative territory seemingly without any real catalyst for the day. Traders of course are focused on the fiscal cliff, but they...
Friends In economic news we got a somewhat mixed message this morning as the PMI Manufacturing Index came in better than expected, while the ISM Manufacturing Index was just shy of awful. The result was a minor rally on the first number and a giveback on the second....
Friends After a week of gyrations spurred by comment after comment from the nation’s politicians, the markets seemed simply out of gas today. The President spoke in the morning- nothing. Speaker Boehner made some comments and answered a few questions a couple of hours...
Friends Looks like there could be a deal! The Republicans need to bring a serious offer to the table! The Democrats have not offered one serious spending cut! Are you getting tired of these proclamations every couple of hours? Do we really expect the politicians to...
Friends We had quite a reversal today in equities, as after a 100 plus Dow point early morning drubbing, stocks spurred on by comments from Boehner and Obama(and later WSJ rumors that the Fed may be ready with QE4 – yes it is almost laughable at this point) and...
Friends Early in the day, we received a plethora of positive economic news including a better than expected durable goods number, a decent Richmond Fed number and another decent consumer confidence number. In addition, we now have seen home prices rise for the last 6...
Friends After Friday’s “the adults are away so the kids will play” rally, stocks somewhat expectedly saw some profit taking in early trading today. But after last week’s revival in equities, today’s give back was not really that bad. Of course, we have to keep one eye...
Friends Stocks seemed destined to drift aimlessly today, but the midday news that there was a ceasefire in the works in the Middle East helped spark a little rally in stocks. But with traders itching to get home and begin their Thanksgiving holiday (Friday is a half...
