Friends Stocks rallied right from the start of trading today, and if you tend to think that this weekend's political happenings are the determining factor in the rally, then I'll leave it to you to decide why stocks are up (no political commentary here). Of course as...

Friends Today's jobs report just didn't cause that much of a stir. 156,000 new jobs were created which was a little shy of analyst's estimates, while the unemployment rate ticked back up to 5%. Average hourly earnings were up .20 % bringing the year over year number...

Friends Stocks saw early triple digit Dow losses erased by the end of the trading session as market participants were mainly quiet as we wait for tomorrow's jobs report. The analysts are looking for about 168,000 new jobs to have been created in September with the...

Friends Bonds continued to sell off today, but stocks reversed course and the market averages enjoyed a nice rally. The ADP private payroll number was weaker than expected, but I'm not sure that factored into today's move. One might have thought the ADP miss would...

Friends Today's story was simple - strength in the dollar caused weakness in stocks, bonds and commodities. In terms of stocks, climbing interest rates produced a selloff in the shares that yield hungry investors had been chasing for quite some time now. By the close...

Friends And we're off. Here we go into the final quarter of the year. First up we have a busy week of economic reports which culminates with Friday's jobs report. But before that, today we got a much better than expected ISM manufacturing number, and on Wednesday we...

Friends Well, I guess all is ok at Deutsche Bank- at least for today. The beleaguered German bank's stock reversed early losses and posted a nice gain for the day, and it appeared that stocks in general took their cue from relative calm around the Deutsche Bank's...

Friends Stocks were minding their own business, flipping back and forth between positive and negative territory, when at midday a report surfaced that the already beleaguered Deutsche Bank was experiencing what some might characterize as a run on their bank. Rumors...

Friends This afternoon Reuters reported that OPEC has reached a deal to limit oil production starting in November. Confusion reigned as "experts" attempted to determine the size of the potential "cut" in production and just what that will mean for oil prices as we...

Friends For those of you with strong political convictions, don't blame me, but today's narrative on Wall Street was that stocks were buoyed by the belief that Hillary Clinton won last night's debate. The feeling is that Hillary brings more of the same, and that is...

Friends Stocks slumped in today's trading as market participants and the business news channels spent the day obsessing over tonight's presidential debate. Typically, markets don't like the unexpected. I think it's safe to say the political climate that we find...

Friends The central bank infused rally ran out of steam today, as the bulls seemed to step aside and let the bears have a little room to run. There really didn't seem to be a catalyst to today's pullback other than perhaps the reality that we get to see on full...

Friends Stocks continued yesterday's central bank infused rally, as the market averages spiked in early trading and spent the rest of the session trying to hang on to those gains. Bonds continued to rally (rates fall) as yesterday's Fed statement seems to have insured...

Friends The Fed decided not to raise interest rates today. I'll pause a moment for everyone to get over the shock. The FOMC statement did indicate that conditions have strengthened, but just to be safe (I added that) the Fed deems it appropriate to wait for further...

Friends Today's trading contained a series of failed rallies. Stocks got off to a nice start to the week at the opening of trading (the Dow sporting a nifty triple digit gain), seemingly following oil's lead, but as oil gave back gains so did stocks. Of course the...