Friends Stocks rocketed to the upside right from the beginning of trading this morning to take out the 2007 high in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The bulls had the record high in their sights for days now, so it wasn’t a real surprise that the old high was going...

Friends Before we talk about the market, I want to announce that CHJ has partnered with the Breast Cancer Charities of America and will sponsor the I Go Pink Golf Classic on May 6th at The Woodlands Country Club. If you are a golfer, we would love to have you join us...

Friends Happy Sequester Day! Yes, I know the world is supposed to end because of $85 billion in budget cuts, but somehow I suspect we will survive those cuts. No, that is not a comment on stock market direction. A whole lot of other factors go into that one. I just...

Friends Despite a strong Chicago PMI number, an upwardly revised 4th quarter GDP number (though barely), and a decent weekly jobless claims number, the quick ramping up of prices over the past two trading session simply ran out of steam today. Traders seemed content...

Friends Holy Cow! I guess if you had gotten all riled up and sold everything (like some TV pundits would have had you done) on Monday when the Italian circus was taking place, you’d be kicking yourself today. After Monday’s bloodbath, the markets had to take some time...

Friends While the Italians continue to figure out who is going to run the country, traders seemed to turn their attention to Dr. Bernanke’s testimony before the Senate today. The Fed Chairman put at ease the worries that the punch bowl would be taken away any time...

Friends At least the Italians are entertaining. You really can’t make this stuff up. The road to austerity in the southern European country was perhaps derailed today as a sexual predator and foul mouthed comedian look to upset the middle of the road candidate in the...

Friends What? We were just kidding-none of it matters today. We are beginning to get a somewhat schizophrenic market, aren’t we? Market gurus were crying “sell everything” yesterday, and lo and behold stocks rallied right back today to actually end mixed (Dow was...

Friends Ok, now I guess it matters. For weeks, if not months bad news of all sorts simply didn’t seem to put a dent in the bullish charge we were seeing in the stock market. Now, all of a sudden, a weak guidance by a company, confusing Fed minutes, an iffy domestic...

Friends The first part of the trading day was defined by the massive sell-off in commodities, as gold, oil, copper and most everything else seemed to be just being dumped regardless of price. For most of the morning, stocks seemed to be weathering the storm only...

Friends Stocks were just drifting along in slightly negative territory for most of the day today, before an internal memo out of Wal-Mart describing February sales as “a total disaster” sent the averages plunging in the early afternoon. But in the last hour stocks...

Friends After an early morning drop, triggered by weakness in Europe, stocks spent the rest of the day fighting to get back into positive territory. Various GDP reports from European countries including disasters from France and Italy, once again verify that the EU is...

Friends Well, the bears decided to fight back today, but didn’t really do that much damage. Before the opening bell the retail sales report was about as expected, nothing to write home about, but not terrible, but the bulls couldn’t drum up enough interest at the...

Friends With the State of the Union address just hours away, I’ve titled today’s missive the “middle class rally”, as the President is surely going to talk about raising up the middle class in America in tonight’s address. Ok, I’m just having a little fun, but the...

Friends The only economic report of any importance today was the Housing Market Index number which was actually a little weaker than expected. That did not seem to deter traders and once again stocks were bought right at the outset, and held their gains for the entire...