Trader Confusion

Trader Confusion

Friends Traders seem a bit confused as the 4th quarter begins, and who can blame them. We came out of the shoot yesterday with a bang only to falter into the close. Today we basically were trying to give back yesterday’s gains, but a late day rally helped limit the...

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Trader Confusion

Well This Is New

Friends How about that! We actually had an up day on a Monday. Maybe we have broken the trend of down Mondays that we experienced all summer. Now if you were watching this thing all day long you may have gotten a feeling that it was really a negative day. That’s...

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Trader Confusion

Stocks Limp Into The End of a Good Quarter

Friends Stocks limped into the end of the quarter, but after all the hand wringing (I know I did my share) and concern about how bad things are, it turned out to be a good one for the bulls. Sure, the economy is slowing as we speak and there is a fiscal cliff looming,...

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Trader Confusion

Bouncing into Quarter End

Friends Traders shook off some disturbing economic news today and bid up stocks as we come to the end of the 3rd quarter. First, we got the final revision of the 2nd quarter GDP which settled at up only 1.3% (remember, at first look we were around 2%). We also...

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Trader Confusion

Pullback Continues

Friends Yesterday they were demonstrating in Spain, today it was Greece (we’ve seen this one before), and once again traders decided that they just didn’t want to buy stocks today. Actually, ever since the big rally on Fed day a couple of weeks ago, stocks have found...

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Trader Confusion

Rough Tuesday

Friends Today is a great reminder that Central Bankers and Politicians may have grandiose plans, but eventually people that are affected by those plans just might have something to say about them. The austerity protest that turned violent in Madrid, Spain this...

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Trader Confusion

Normal Monday

Friends The news dominating the day was that Apple “only” sold 5 million iPhone 5’s this weekend. You know why they only sold 5 million iPhone 5’s this weekend? Because that’s all the iPhone 5’s they had. That seems like a good problem to have. Gee, I can’t make...

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Trader Confusion

Big Rebalancing Day? Not Really.

Friends Traders seemed to be waiting all day for the much ballyhooed rebalancing of the S&P 500 at the close of trading. As it turned out, stocks had another day of drifting until the last ten minutes, and even then it wasn’t much of a move. For the day, the Dow Jones...

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Trader Confusion

A Show About Nothing

Friends Nothing happened today. No, I really mean it, absolutely nothing happened in the markets today. The weekly new unemployment claims number was a non-event. The number has remained under 400,000 but just barely for months now. No news there. Stocks just seem to...

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Trader Confusion

Stocks Quiet/Oil Falls

Friends The bulls attempted to take stocks considerably higher early in the trading session, but by the end of the day they couldn’t muster much of an advance. The big story the last couple of days has been the $10 collapse in oil prices after last week’s run up. Of...

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Trader Confusion

Waiting for Earnings Season?

Friends It was another very quiet day of trading, as after last week’s bevy of news, traders seem to be searching for a reason to buy or sell. The bulls got their excitement last week when Dr. Bernanke and the Fed went “all in”, and the bears still seem shell shocked...

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Trader Confusion

The Last Monday of the Summer-Nothing New

Friends Well it is fitting that the last Monday of the Summer was negative for stocks. Nearly every Monday (14 out of the last 15) this summer has had a selling bias and after last week’s fireworks, it is not surprising that we would give a little back early this...

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Trader Confusion

Fed Stuns The Markets

Friends The bears brought a knife to the fight. Dr. Bernanke brought a bazooka. Sure, traders expected the Fed Chairman to announce some type of QE today, but what they got was much more than they bargained for. The FOMC statement that came out at 11:30 our time,...

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Trader Confusion

Apple Day Today/Fed Day Tomorrow

Friends Other than Apple rolling out the iPhone 5, today was rather void of news, and markets were rather quiet as a result. Remember, today was day one of the Fed meeting. Tomorrow is day two and we’ll get the announcement late in the morning and Dr. Bernanke’s press...

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Trader Confusion

Recovering Monday’s Losses

Friends I’d like to begin today’s note by first saying that we are very much thinking about those who were lost 11 years ago today. We will never forget them or that fateful day. Now we’ll turn our attention to the markets. Stocks recovered Monday’s losses during...

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