Friends As we alluded to last week, we have now seemed to enter the adjustment phase as it pertains to the Fed and monetary policy. Just the hint that the Federal Reserve may begin to take the punch bowl away sooner than later has sent the bond and stock market into...

Friends It was quite an active week, wasn’t it? After gaining a couple hundred Dow points on Monday and Tuesday, stocks sank 550 Dow points on Wednesday and Thursday. It seemed traders couldn’t decide which way to go for most of the day today, as stocks waffled back...

Friends I think we have our answer. For anyone who wondered just why stocks have been rising for the past 6 months, we got our definitive answer over the past two trading sessions. Stocks were going up because of easy money. End of story. The minute there is even a...

Friends I am sure the Federal Reserve Chairman is a very nice guy. I also applaud his attempt to continuously explain Fed policy to the public and not be as “cloak and dagger” as his predecessors. The problem with Dr. Bernanke and his fellow Fed Governors is that they...

Friends Wow, the bulls seem pretty confident that Dr. Bernanke is not going to rain on their parade tomorrow. Stocks climbed all day as the bears just seemed to disappear. Today marks the sixth day in a row of more than a 100 point move in the Dow. Once again, traders...

Friends Call it the case of the battling financial news organizations. After a Wall Street Journal columnist hinted that the message from this week’s Fed meeting will be that Dr. Bernanke and crew will not be hasty in taking the punch bowl away (which led to a hefty...

Friends The volatility continues as does the string of down weeks, as stocks could not build on yesterday’s gains and spent almost the entire day in negative territory. A little hotter than expected Producer Price Index may have stoked the fire, but yesterday’s up...

Friends Wow, volatility is back indeed. After horrendous overnight trading in Japan, futures indicated early this morning that we might be in for an ugly day for the bulls. But decent economic news, including a solid retail sales number and another decent weekly...

Friends Yes indeed, volatility has returned. Trading in stocks lately is beginning to bring back memories of 2011. Today, we began with a 100 plus point move up in the Dow (for no particular reason), but by late morning the gains had evaporated, and selling persisted...

Friends Today’s trading had a bit of a chicken and egg feel to it. First of all, we will acknowledge that overnight trading in Asian and European markets was extremely negative, and the mess that is Japan continues to send conflicting signals, but stocks for the past...

Friends As market participants spent most of the day waiting for Apple to introduce its new operating system (and early reviews are that IOS 7 looks pretty cool), stocks drifted aimlessly throughout the trading session. After last week’s volatility, traders seemed...

Friends The much anticipated non-farm payroll number was somewhat of a best of both worlds or Goldilocks number. Last month 175,000 new jobs were created in the United States (yes, that is better than the number I had guessed, for entertainment purposes only), which...

Friends After yesterday’s drubbing, stocks seemed poised to post a third down day in a row as the Dow was down a spooky 117 points in early trading. But the afternoon brought with it a reversal, as some major technical levels held, and stocks staged an impressive...

Friends Well, it had to end someday. Yes, the streak of up Tuesdays ended today. After twenty Tuesdays in a row of stocks being up, we finally had a down day for the major averages on a Tuesday. The main culprit seems to be the musings of Kansas City Fed Governor...

Friends Friday’s, last day of the month selloff, was a distant memory today as stocks rallied despite overnight chaos in Japanese trading. We get a lot of economic news this week, including the non-farm payroll number on Friday, and today’s ISM manufacturing number...