Friends For those of you who had the opportunity to watch the business channel CNBC over the past 22 years, today’s announcement that Mark Haines has died gives me that feeling that I have lost a family member. I have watched Mark since day one of his groundbreaking...
Friends The good news is that Consumer Staple and Healthcare stocks (of which we here at CHJ have been fans of for a few years now) have been moving to yearly highs in recent days. The bad news is that Consumer Staple and Healthcare stocks have been moving to yearly...
Friends Stocks have had a somewhat sloppy week as traders try to decide if the recent bounce in the dollar is going to last or be very short-lived. As we know, the 2 year bull market has been built on a weakening dollar. We have seen the balance sheets of U. S....
Friends Markets had a difficult day today with the slight rally in the dollar producing a selloff in commodities (oil and silver crushed again) and an overlapping selloff in industrial, energy and material stocks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the day down...
Friends Talk about letting the air out of a bubble. Oil dropped $10 per barrel today to end the day around $99 per barrel. We were looking at $115 just a week or so ago. And how about silver, down almost $5 today to just over $34 per ounce. Last week we were looking...
Friends We had a pleasant surprise this morning with the release of the non-farm payroll number. After the last several weeks of less than stellar economic reports, the government jobs number was an increase of 244,000 new jobs. That was quite a bit better than the...
Friends As we prepare for a new week of trading, the report of the death of Osama Bin Laden is trumping all other news, economic or otherwise. Americans feel pretty darn good this morning and as far as the markets are concerned, that sure can’t be a bad thing. So much...
Friends What a difference a week makes. For that matter, what a difference a few days makes. Last Friday a grumpy Mr. Market let us know that he meant business. After a handful of earnings reports, which began with Alcoa and mixed in a couple of banks such as Bank of...
Friends The rating agency S&P reaffirmed the United States debt rating at AAA this morning, but put the U. S. on a negative credit watch. What does this mean? Well, if the folks in Washington don’t address the mounting debt problems in this country then the inevitable...
Friends, Mr. Market seems a bit grumpy these past several days. Earnings season has begun, and it sure looks like companies are going to have a difficult time pleasing traders over the next couple of weeks. Hitting your numbers is simply not going to be good enough...
Friends The “Teflon” market continues to climb the “wall of worry”. Bad consumer confidence numbers this morning coupled with awful housing numbers, did not deter traders from buying stocks today. The S&P 500 closed above 1319, right at a resistance level. 1323 is the...
Friends Impressive, is the best term I can use for the resiliency of the stock market over the past few weeks. Talk about a lot to deal with. We’ve had strife in Egypt and then Libya, the devastation in Japan, and now we’re focusing, again, on the European debt crisis...
Friends I hope you had a nice weekend and enjoyed the beautiful weather. I don’t want you to think that the only time you hear from us is on down days, so I am happy to report that stocks enjoyed a 178 point rise in Dow Jones Industrial Average closing well above...
Friends Friday was a day full of moves as we had the G7 central banks overnight agree to a coordinated intervention to keep the Japanese Yen from continuing its climb. As the Japanese currency rises vs. other currencies, it becomes more difficult for Japanese...
Friends How about a little pep talk at this point. After days of delivering bad news (and today isn’t any better with the Dow down 242 points), I want you to remember what our mindset was, just two years ago this month. Remember, we had experienced the second 50% drop...
