Friends We got a trio of unflattering domestic economic reports this morning including a weak Leading Economic Indicators number. The Philly Fed number also indicated a drop in factory production, and the weekly initial jobless claims number went the wrong direction,...

Friends We had the second day of testimony by Fed Chairman Bernanke, this time before the House Financial Services Committee, and there was nothing particularly new revealed today. Yes, the proceedings in the House tend to be a bit more feisty and partisan, but...

Friends Today’s market movement was influenced by earnings reports, economic reports and Dr. Bernanke’s testimony in front of the Senate Banking Committee. On the earnings front, Johnson and Johnson disappointed slightly, while Coca Cola delivered another stellar...

Friends We received a slew of early morning economic reports this morning, and all of them confirm a slowing U. S. economy. Retail sales for June were anemic and the Empire State Manufacturing Survey showed weakness, and in fact actual contraction, in manufacturing in...

Friends Fueled by “not worse than expected” economic numbers out of China last night, and better than expected earnings out of J P Morgan Chase (notwithstanding the potential trading malfeasance), traders decided that they were willing to buy stocks today, after 6...

Friends Stocks spent most of the day in negative territory (down well over 100 points at one point), and although the bulls did make a late attempt to get to positive territory the bears pushed them back. A decent first time unemployment claims number didn’t get...

Friends Stocks fell for the fifth day in a row as traders, deciphering the Fed minutes today, decided that there was not enough evidence of impending additional quantitative easing (more punch for the punchbowl). The bears have been roaring for days now, and every...

Friends For the past six weeks we have seen a pattern of lower stock prices on Monday, and then higher prices on “turnaround” Tuesdays. This morning it appeared we were going to continue the trend as stock prices moved higher at the opening and by mid-morning we had...

Friends Traders were tentative during Monday’s trading as everyone awaits the beginning of earnings season. We have already seen many companies warn that this quarter will be weaker than expected, and we will be monitoring analysts’ conference calls as companies are...

Friends Following the better than expected ADP private sector jobs number reported yesterday, the release of the non-farm payroll number this morning was a letdown. Only 80,000 new jobs were created in June which was less than the consensus estimate and way short of...

Friends We had a lot of news and data points this morning, beginning with interest rate cuts by the ECB in Europe (cut its key rate by 25 bps) and also in China where they cut their lending rate and their deposit rate. Then we got a better than expected ADP private...

Friends As expected, today’s half day of trading was very light. Stocks did have a bias to the upside all morning fueled by a better than expected factory order number. After an advance of almost 70 Dow points, stocks faded a bit but rallied again into the close and...

Friends With traders out for a lot of this holiday week, look for volume to be light and stocks easily pushed around if there is any significant news. As for today, the main economic piece of news that we had was the ISM manufacturing index which was just awful. The...

Friends Well, well, no one expected the EU summit to produce such a promising set of initiatives, now did they? Did Ms. Merkel actually blink first. It appears so, as the Italians and Spanish basically said- bail us out or else (you know the old adage- if you owe the...