Friends The earnings season is beginning to takes its toll on many individual issues (see IBM today, for instance), but the market averages continue to hang tough. That’s right, despite the somewhat “shaky” earnings reports we have seen so far, the market in general...

Friends Let’s take a moment to look back to the 1987 “crash” and see what has transpired since. On that Oct. 19th day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 1738. Today, 28 years later it closed at 17,230. The more broad based S&P 500 closed at 224.84 on the...

Friends Amongst the debris of soft economic data and lukewarm earnings reports, stocks were able to post small gains for the week, which is surprising given the way the week began. I wouldn’t declare victory for the bulls, any more than I would have for the bears...

Friends Just when it looked like the bears could capitalize on the dreary earnings reports, the big banks seemed to have reversed the flow in the bulls favor-at least for today’s trading session. The expectations were low for the likes of JP Morgan, Citi, B of A and...

Friends For those market participants that were becoming worried that the recent rise in stocks was too much too soon, and had no basis in reality – well they can relax. Stocks spent the day in negative territory and the Dow led by Walmart (which was down 10% for the...

Friends Hopefully you received our quarterly piece today and I promise I am not going to say another thing about the Astros. As for the markets, stocks spent a good portion of the day trying to decide which way to go, but as the afternoon wore on the bears were able...

Friends As we delve into earnings week (and this week we will see multiple banks reporting) stocks continue to climb. Not that there was much to talk about today, as the bond market was closed for Columbus Day. Nevertheless share prices ended higher and kept the bulls...

Friends The markets showed very little life today as traders seemed mostly uninterested in participating in the proceedings. Once again, this was a week somewhat void of economic news, and earnings season doesn’t really kick into high gear until next week. The bulls...

Friends As the free for all in the House of Representatives for speaker of the house (seems like no one wants it) captured the headlines today, the bulls decided to step in and do a little stock buying this afternoon. Things were quiet up until the release of recent...

Friends After an initial, somewhat tasty advance in early morning trading, stocks seesawed back and forth today until the bulls decided to take the reins and propel us into decisively positive territory in the last hour of trading. Once again it was a somewhat slow...

Friends The stock market took a bit of a breather today after the extraordinary and unexpected advance that we had seen since Friday morning. Earnings season has begun, with the likes of Pepsi beating lowered expectations, but the week will be a quiet one on the...

Friends As the never ending list of negative pundits endeavor to explain just what is going on in the stock market since Friday morning, stocks just keep pushing higher (as measured by the Dow, stocks have climbed more than 750 points since the Friday morning low). Is...

Friends What a crazy day in the markets. First, let’s begin with the jobs report. Let’s just say, it wasn’t good. Only 142,000 new jobs were created in September and the August number was revised downward too. Average hourly earnings were flat, and the unemployment...

Friends The first trading session of the new quarter resembled what we have seen for a good portion of the year. Intra-day volatility was back on display, as an up opening quickly turned into a more than 200 point drop in the Dow. As the trading session wore on stocks...