Friends The basic takeaway from today’s plethora of economic reports is that the economy is hanging in there, growing slowly with modest core inflation, and that at this pace the likelihood of additional QE before the election is growing very slim. With this as the...
Friends The rush of economic data began today with the release of the PPI (which was a little hotter than expected) and July’s Retail Sales number (which was definitely better than expected). Traders took their cue and bought stocks early, but as the day wore on the...
Friends Talk about the dog days of summer. Once again we experienced very quiet trading, but today, for the first time in a week we had a negative bias. With little economic news, as most of the networks focused on Congressman Ryan (God forbid, we actually have a...
Friends I haven’t seen markets this quiet in a long time. The guys in the office had to wake me in time to do today’s email. In all seriousness, without any real news of any consequence, stocks have just meandered along for most of this week on very little volume....
Friends After gaining the higher ground by capturing the 1400 level on the S&P 500, the bulls should be satisfied that we have had a couple very quiet days. As we have mentioned in the past, after having a good meal, taking time to digest that meal is good for you....
Friends It was another slow day of trading today as market participants couldn’t decide whether to buy them or sell them today. After a quick 50 point drop on the opening, stocks worked their way back to even and spent the rest of the day just on either side of that...
Friends Stocks continued to add to their recent gains today, as the bears continue to be frustrated. Remember, the market can always confound the majority of people the majority of the time. Pundits are referring to this as the most unloved advance of all time, and...
Friends After nine Mondays in a row of losses, stocks finally had a decent beginning to the week. Yes, volume was extremely light, but nevertheless with no real news to drive momentum, stocks continued late last week’s rally (although we did give most of the rally...
Friends I like it. From all accounts, we went up today because of “good” news. Now, was the news really that good? Well no. The government non-farm payroll number showed we created 163,000 new jobs in July, which was better than the 100,000 number the street was...
Friends Well it looks like ECB President Mario Draghi might have over promised and under delivered when last week he indicated that the European Central Bank was “all in” and would do “whatever it takes” to preserve the euro, but today delivered little in terms of...
Friends After the Fed release at 1:15 our time, stocks seemed to not be able to figure out which way to go. The Dow alternated between red and green as traders seemed simply exhausted from waiting on central bankers to declare their intentions. As for the FOMC...
Friends Trading was very light today as market participants await news from central bankers tomorrow and Thursday. First up is the announcement from the FOMC meeting tomorrow which will inform traders as to any new direction that the Fed may take. Then, on Thursday,...
Friends The bulls tried to make it four days in a row, but for the ninth Monday in a row, stocks ended the day in negative territory. By the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down a meager 2 points to close at 13,072. The S&P 500 was down less than a point...
Friends Wow! What an end to the week. After three miserable days for markets late last week and early this week, stocks staged a fierce 3 day rally based on the hope that central banks here and abroad are prepared to fill the liquidity punch bowl to the brim. With the...
Friends ECB President Mario Draghi let the markets know that he is prepared to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. Ok then. When his comments hit the wires early this morning before trading began, the futures turned from negative to positive in an instant, and...
