Friends Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke continued, during his testimony today, to attempt to convince market participants that tapering (he never used the word today) is not tightening or changing Fed monetary policy. He seems, at least for today, to have...

Friends Market participants seemed to be content to wait on the plethora of earnings releases that we will receive this week, as well as testimony of Fed Chairman Bernanke before the House on Wednesday and the Senate on Thursday. On the economic front the Retail Sales...

Friends Spurred on by what the market interpreted as dovish comments by Dr. Bernanke in a question and answer setting after the market closed yesterday, stocks rallied and added to their gains as the session wore on. Though previous comments from the Fed really were...

Friends Hand wringing over the release of the minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee meeting kept stocks quiet and within a tight trading range most of the morning. Once the minutes were released at 1:00 our time, volatility did pick up a little, but the...

Friends Stocks had an upward bias right from the beginning of trading and were able to hold on to most of their gains as the trading session wore on. Not much to report on the economic front, but earnings season does begin after the close, with Alcoa’s release. For...

Friends Today sure felt like a Monday. Anyway, on the Friday after the 4thof July, traders waited for the all-important government non-farm payroll data and it was worth the wait. After a decent private sector ADP report on Wednesday, today’s number came in at a very...

Friends There was a lot going on for a half day of trading. On the economic front, the ADP private sector job number came in at 188,000 new jobs having been created last month which would indicate that Friday’s non-farm payroll number should come in at about 175,000...

Friends Stocks endured another roller coaster type day as a solid upward opening faded away to a steady decline as the session wore on. After being up more than 70 Dow points in early trading, traders worried by the pictures coming out of Egypt sold the Dow down 100...

Friends With this being a shortened holiday week, we might expect that trading will be light, but as the new quarter began it looked like we would continue our string of triple digit moves, as the Dow was sporting a nifty 174 point gain early in the trading session....

Friends Stocks finished the month with a volatile day of trading. The Dow was down well over 100 points in early trading, fueled by a weak Chicago PMI number and a lukewarm consumer confidence number, but rallied back to even by late midday. As the afternoon wore on...

Friends Another triple digit day and for the third day in a row to the upside. Once again, the day was filled with Fed Governors attempting to put the Genie back in the bottle from last week’s FOMC meeting. So far, despite the bond market’s jitters, stock traders...

Friends Traders shook off the disappointing 2nd revision to 1st quarter GDP, and sent stocks higher today for a second day in a row of triple digit gains for the averages. After yesterday’s bevy of good economic numbers, today’s GDP revision seemed to be “old news” at...

Friends Today was a good day for the bulls. Nearly every trading session over the past three weeks has produced a triple digit move in the Dow, and today was no exception. Fueled by some very good economic news including a much better than expected consumer confidence...