Friends After a couple days of rising prices, stocks paused today for a little regrouping. Unfortunately, we got the politicians out of town, but the Fed Chairman was dropping pearls of wisdom at a monitored lunch event, indicating that if the politicians take us over...
Friends Let’s see, the President is out of the country, the Congress is out of Washington D.C. and stocks explode to the upside. Coincidence? I think not. That’s right, with nothing very noteworthy on the “fiscal cliff” front, traders were able to take a breath today...
Friends After being down in early trading, stocks rallied late in the morning when Congressional leaders emerged from their meeting with the President holding hands and singing Kumbaya. Yes, they said all the right things, like they know what they have to do etc., and...
Friends Here is how I can best describe what is going on in the stock market right now. Imagine a large spring that is being pushed down upon day after day by traders and investors. As the spring continues to compress it is storing up more and more energy that will...
Friends Stocks continue to fall as the wrangling over the fiscal cliff continues. From the September highs, we have now seen a more than 1000 point drop in the Dow and about an 8% drop in the S&P 500. As we indicated, the markets will cast judgment on the...
Friends With the bond market closed today, stocks basically just drifted along on very light volume as traders seem reluctant to get involved at the moment. With non-stop talk of the fiscal cliff and what type of deal might be struck, investors seem almost scared to...
Friends After a couple of days of selling, stocks found a little sponsorship today, but not without some volatility. At the open we continued the last 2 days selloff, but by late morning we had climbed back into positive territory. As Speaker of the House Boehner held...
Friends The stock market continued its downward path as investors seem to be sending a message to politicians that it is time to get things done. As I mentioned yesterday, the markets will not be patient with procrastinating politicians. But, the important thing for...
Friends The election is over and we are left with government that is basically the same it was yesterday. No change in the White House and very little change in Congress. All that money spent and basically we are right where we started. Oh well, as we say around here,...
Friends Here are my two interpretations of today’s rally (and it was a nice one indeed). The first interpretation is that traders believe that Obama will win, and that means more of the same of what has moved the markets in the past three years (easy money and...
Friends Yes, the election is tomorrow and I will be glad when it is over and behind us, but I wanted to begin today’s note with a special “thank you” to Carolyn Ilse who is going to be leaving CHJ in a couple of weeks. Carolyn was integral in helping to get this...
Friends Well, is everyone ready for the election – to be over? Yes, the political storytelling is getting real tiresome, but by next Wednesday it will all be behind us (at least I hope). Anyway, this morning’s employment report confirmed that things continue to get...
Friends We had a lot of economic news today including the ADP Employment Report, Weekly Jobless Claims, ISM Manufacturing Index and Consumer Confidence and the main takeaway is that on the whole, the domestic economic situation is strengthening. Sure, it is very...
Friends Well, as they try to put the pieces back together on the east coast, and our hearts are with them, the markets did get open and stocks did trade on this Halloween day. The powers that be really wanted to get the exchanges open today, and with a whole lot of...
Friends On the economic front, the consumer confidence number held steady which was somewhat encouraging, while the first look at 3rd quarter GDP (remember they revise it two more times) showed the economy growing at 2% which is a little higher than expected (don’t be...
