Friends Well my reverse psychology on oil seemed to work. We finally got a bounce in crude prices after it appeared that oil would not stop going down until it hit zero. Along with the bounce in crude, stock prices also staged a rally, gave it back, and then climbed...

Friends You know that you’re in a bear market when a Dow down 249 points actually feels good. Yes, actually after a 566 point drop in the Dow, either sellers just ran out of gas, or perhaps a few brave souls decided to buy something. After all, the early morning...

Friends Failed rallies are a signature of a bear market. Though we haven’t seen many so far this year, when we have gotten a rally it is quickly met with more selling. Once again, oil was pointed to for today’s failure as a 200 point early Dow gain quickly dissipated...

Friends There was nothing on the economic front that would necessarily affect the direction of stocks today. The Philly Fed Survey showed improvement in conditions in the mid-Atlantic manufacturing, but new orders were disappointing. The CPI number came in as...

Friends Unfortunately, the bounce we saw yesterday, quickly disappeared at the opening this morning as the bears are firmly in control of the situation at the moment. Sentiment has turned decidedly negative, as economic data is weak (today’s PPI indicating that...

Friends Well that’s a little better. We finally got ourselves a little bounce, and we certainly were overdue for it. After a sloppy start to the day, stocks reversed a losing hand as the morning wore on and by afternoon we found ourselves with some tasty gains...

Friends Another difficult day of trading. Stocks tried to rally early in the day, but by late morning, we were in the red and falling. After a pause in the late afternoon, stocks drifted further into negative territory, tacking on to the miserable start for 2016. When...

Friends You should have received our 1st quarter outlook via email this morning, so we’ll just go straight to the numbers for today. After another seesawing day, by the close the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 120 points to finish the day at 16,516. The S&P 500...

Friends Today’s trading had a little different flavor than the past 5 trading sessions. Yes, we spent time in negative territory after an early morning failed rally, but in the last half hour of trading stocks reversed a near 100 point Dow loss and turned it into a...

Friends The good news today was that the jobs number was much better than expected, as 292,000 new jobs were created in December. The bad news is despite or because of that, stocks fell once again, capping off the worst first week of trading of a new year ever (and...

Friends This miserable first week of trading for 2016 seems like it won’t ever end. Once again falling stock prices in China (that is quite a fiasco unfolding) fueled selloffs in overseas markets and led to futures down big before this morning’s open. Once trading...

Friends Another difficult day for stocks in this initial week of trading of 2016. Overnight we had news of the nut case in North Korea testing what was claimed to be an H-bomb. In addition continued currency devaluation in China and the seemingly never ending plunge...

Friends Things were a lot calmer today in the markets. Sure, we had some seesawing up and down, but for the most part it was a calm drift to nowhere. Pessimism for stocks appears to be growing as we move our way through the first week of trading for the year, and the...

Friends I wanted to take some time this week to wrap up 2015, but today’s stock market actions dictates that we leave 2015 behind (we’ll go into detail in the quarterly outlook which will be coming soon), and get right into the action of 2016. News of a collapse in...