Friends Despite continued concern over the situation in Iraq, stocks managed to post small gains for the session as the week came to a close. On the economic front the PPI number was very benign and consumer sentiment came in a little more negative than expected....

Friends Stocks suffered a second day of losses as worries over the deteriorating situation in Iraq sent oil prices soaring and caused stock traders to hit the sell button. Once again, volume was very light, but stocks did spend the entire day in negative territory. As...

Friends We had a little more action today-unfortunately, it was to the downside. Perhaps fueled by the shocking loss in the Republican Primary that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor suffered, traders seemed in a grouchy mood today. Stocks fell from the start and...

Friends I see them on TV so I know they’re out there, but all those men and women on the floor of the NYSE and in trading rooms all over the globe simply don’t seem interested in the markets right now. As we have noted, the volatility and volume have dried up as...

Friends To come up with additional ways to describe the lack of interest/activity in the markets right now might require I take a course in creative writing. Once again today’s trading saw very little volatility, volume or direction. There were a couple of speeches by...

Friends How about that? The consensus estimates for the non-farm payroll number were just about on target this time – 217,000 new jobs were created in May. The unemployment rate came in at 6.3%. The fact is, we continue to add jobs, perhaps not at the pace that we...

Friends Traders finally got something exciting to trade on. No, it wasn’t the news out of the ECB where basically Mr. Draghi is indicating that Europe is ready to take the baton of quantitative easing from the U. S., slashing bank reserve rates to a negative interest...

Friends As you know we send out a daily email which gives a brief summary of what happened in the markets that day. For those of you who are not clients of ours, or are relatively new followers, I thought I might take a moment to explain the origins of our daily email...

Friends Ok, back to the regular email. Hope you enjoyed the little history of the email this morning. Well, another day of not much happening. The ADP employment number which measures private sector payroll growth showed 179,000 new jobs on company payrolls for May,...

Friends We saw another day of trading where nothing much really happened. Stocks drifted in slightly negative territory for most of the session, as traders may be holding their powder dry for the more important economic data that we will receive later in the week...

Friends Stocks got off to a quiet start for June as traders spent the early part of the trading session trying to figure out the ISM Manufacturing Index which was released this morning, revised, and then revised again- all within about an hour or so. The first release...

Friends Traders were content to let the month coast into the closing bell as stocks drifted aimlessly for most of the trading session. With next week’s full calendar of economic news including Mr. Draghi and the ECB’s decision on interest rates and the employment...

Friends Despite the GDP number for the first quarter being revised downward to a negative 1%, stocks enjoyed a healthy gain after spending most of the day only slightly in positive territory. Traders are expecting the second quarter to show marked improvement in...

Friends Traders of stocks seemed today to be paralyzed/mesmerized by what continues to happen in the bond market. Despite the improvement that we have seen, though very deliberate in nature, in economic data points, bond yields continue to decline. Folks, bond yields...

Friends A bevy of positive economic data helped move stocks to new highs today, as traders came back from the three day holiday weekend with a shopping list in hand. The durable goods number was much better than expected, the Case-Shiller index showed that home price...