Friends An asteroid is passing the earth today and it’s “name” is 1998 QE2. Yes, that’s right; its “last name” is QE2. You really can’t make this up. Hopefully, there is not a financial asteroid heading our way named QE2 or QE3 or QE-infinity.  Anyway, I digress....

Friends Punch bowl addicted traders were encouraged this morning as the GDP revision and the weekly unemployment claims number both were less than stellar, allowing the reality that bad news is good news once again for buyers of stocks. The “taper” talk, or when will...

Friends Volatility has surely picked up, hasn’t it? Today, stocks fueled by more early disruption in bond prices, opened lower and continued lower most of the morning. By late morning the Dow was down 181 points led by a sizable drop in consumer staples, telecom,...

Friends The bulls came back from the three day weekend raring to go as stocks rose over 200 Dow points in early morning trading. Encouraged by good news on housing (prices nationwide are up 10.9% over the past 12 months), and a surprisingly good consumer confidence...

Friends It’s been a little different type of week than we have seen for a while. For one thing stocks were actually down for the week. Haven’t seen that for a while. Ironically, the economic news was rather positive for the week. The unemployment claims number was...

Friends Wow, risk happens fast. After rocking and rolling for months now, stocks in Japan dropped more than 7% in trading overnight, setting up for a very jittery market open here in the U. S. Remember, yesterday was that scary looking reversal day that brought the...

Friends With the disaster that we watched our neighbors to the north endure yesterday, it is very difficult to focus on anything else, but I’ll do my best to catch you up with the market’s action today. It’s Tuesday, so of course stocks were up. Yes, that is 19...

Friends You, of course, have heard the term “melt-down” used when referring to the prices of shares of stock falling precipitously. We seem to be experiencing somewhat of a “melt-up” at the moment, as the stock market appears to have caught an enormous number of bears...

Friends Bullish traders finally succumbed to negative economic news and simple overbought conditions in today’s trading as the averages ended the day in negative territory. To be fair, stocks basically treaded water for most of the day, just heading downward in the...

Friends We had somewhat of a roller coaster ride today in the stock market. Originally, it looked like we might have a little weakness today as stocks opened to the downside. But as often has been the case lately, the buyers appeared and pushed the averages higher by...

Friends It must be Tuesday, the stock market was up. Yes, I know I’ve been harping on it for weeks now, but it seems like stocks have been higher every Tuesday since I was 12 years old (and that’s a long time ago). I tried to give some reasoning for the market...

Friends As has been the case for most of the year on Mondays, stocks traded lower as investors began to ponder just what the Fed’s next actions will be and what consequences will be involved. After a weekend Wall Street journal article questioning what the Fed’s...

Friends, With the stock market practically comatose today, let’s talk about bonds and the dollar for a minute. The dollar has been showing remarkable strength over the past week rallying against the Japanese Yen and Aussie Dollar. This has contributed to a fall in...

Friends Stocks looked to be on course for another slightly up day, before a rumor about a pending Wall Street Journal article indicating that the Fed might be willing to ease up on asset purchases sooner than later, sent the indexes to their first loss in days. On the...

Friends As we pointed out last week, we haven’t had a down Tuesday in a long time. Today marks the 17th straight Tuesday of stock market gains. Yes, Monday’s have been somewhat sloppy most of the year, though recently they have gotten better, but Tuesday’s have been...