Friends As we mentioned yesterday, there is not a lot of economic news until Friday, and that is leaving traders feeling a little frisky, as they continue to bid up the prices of stocks. Finally, this week we are seeing a bit of a rotation from the “defensive” in...

Friends As the financial news networks were preoccupied with the goings on at JC Penny, traders decided by midday that stocks weren’t going to get any cheaper so they decided to put on their buying cap. With no real news to distract them, investors seemed to want to...

Friends The stock market showed a lot of resilience today. After a 50 point drop in early morning trading in the Dow, stocks rallied in the afternoon to post gains by the close. Without much news to trade on, investors seemed uninterested as the day began, but became...

Friends Well, the non-farm payroll number that we received this morning was dreadful. Remember, the markets were expecting somewhere around 200,000 new jobs to have been created in March, but the number came in at only 88,000. Yes, both the January and February...

Friends Once again, we continue the pattern of one day up and then the next day down. This week we have seen a down Monday followed by an up Tuesday, a down Wednesday and today an up Thursday. Underneath the seesawing action, though, we have seen some deterioration in...

Friends Stocks had a lot of headwinds to deal with today, beginning with the weaker than expected ADP private sector job report. The market had been looking for about 170,000 new jobs created in March (some estimates were as high as 240,000), but the report indicated...

Friends   For the first time in a while we had a down day on the first day of a quarter. Fueled by a weak ISM Manufacturing Index number and weak numbers out of China, traders set the negative tone early and stocks remained in negative territory all day long....

Friends Despite a plethora of uninspiring economic news, including a disappointing weekly jobless claims number, a final look at 4th quarter GDP and a lousy Chicago PMI number, stocks held a positive bias all day long. A relatively calm situation developed in Cypress...

Friends Stocks continued the recent seesaw type action today as an early morning 100 point plus drop in the Dow Jones IndustrialAverage gave way to a relentless climb back towards positive territory. As it turns out the Dow couldn’t  finish the deal and ended with a...

Friends Stocks seemed determined today to set a new high for the Dow and establish a new closing high for the S&P 500. Traders had to sort through a bevy of economic reports as the durable goods orders soared led by aircraft orders (the underlying core was weak...

Friends Wow! The non-farm payroll number was better than expected. Again, consensus expectations were for about 170,000 new jobs, but today’s number came in at 236,000 new jobs created last month. The unemployment rate fell to 7.7%. All in all, a very pleasant report....

Friends As traders wait for tomorrow’s all-important non-farm payroll number (economists are looking for about 170,000 new jobs), stocks drifted in positive territory for most of the session. Today’s weekly jobless claims number continued to show slight improvement...

Friends After all the excitement yesterday about reaching new highs in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, it would not have been surprising to see stocks take a pause today, but though trading was quiet, stocks remained in positive territory for the entire trading...