Friends It may not have felt like it, but we just enjoyed the best week of the year for stocks, and that is on the heels of last week being the worst week of the year. A little volatility, eh? The uplift throughout the day was mainly attributed to traders who were...

Friends Before Dr. Bernanke even began to give his testimony in front of Congress this morning, markets were encouraged by a somewhat unexpected quarter point rate cut on borrowing in China. Actually, by the time Bernanke testified stocks were already losing a little...

Friends Stocks enjoyed a very nice rally today, as traders leaning negative decided to cover their shorts ahead of Dr. Bernanke’s testimony tomorrow. The bears are also a bit concerned that the European leaders may throw a Hail Mary pass and come up with another...

Friends A slightly better than expected non-manufacturing ISM number (boy we needed a good number) helped buoy stocks modestly today, giving us the first decisively positive day in some time. With nothing new coming out of Europe, trading was quiet and quite light,...

Friends Because traders came in to work today expecting a very difficult stock market (based on how futures were trading last night), a small loss in the averages today almost feels like a win. After last week’s deluge of domestic economic news, we are at the mercy of...

Friends As we know, May ended up being a very difficult month for risk assets with the Dow and the S&P down more than 6% for the month. Well, the first day of June continued the pain. This morning’s release of the government’s non-farm payroll number was a major...

Friends May is finally over, and it was not a good one for stocks or commodities. With the domestic economic numbers definitely slowing somewhat, coupled with the continuing drain that is the European dilemma, investors have chosen to accept zero interest rates...

Friends Stocks gave back all of yesterday’s gains and then some today. Worries over Spain and Italy’s bond yields, and the Eurozone in general, sent the Euro tumbling, which sent yields on the 10 year treasury note to an all-time low as investors continue to head for...

Friends Even with the continued concerns that Greece’s days in the Eurozone may be coming to an end, and the continued problems in Spain and Spanish banks, stocks staged a rather surprising rally today. Like a fighter who can take punch after punch, stocks shrugged...

Friends Buyers of stocks got an early start to the Memorial Day holiday. As we suspected, participation was very light today and of course that allows markets to be pushed around rather easily. Add to that, that we are on a Greece death watch, and traders decided that...

Friends Should I stay or should I go? 30 years ago, the English punk rock group “The Clash” asked this very question in the form of a song. Today, leaders in Greece are pondering the question as it pertains to being part of the Eurozone. And we wait, and wait, and...

Friends As traders waited for European leaders to finish dinner and come out and tell us how they are going to save Greece and the Eurozone, stocks sold off hard all day long with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down nearly 200 points by midday. But as the last hour...

Friends Stocks were quietly trying to digest yesterday’s gains in the first half hour of trading, when at 9:00 we got a solid existing home sales report. The bulls jumped on the good news and drove stocks nicely into positive territory. But after hanging on to a nice...

Friends Despite the continued disappointment in the Facebook IPO (more about that in a moment) stocks staged their first real rally in weeks. On a technical basis we have been in an oversold situation for days, so a little bounce here is not a real surprise, but it is...

Friends Today is Facebook Day. The business channels as well as the general media are droning on incessantly about the IPO (Initial Public Offering) of the social media company that begins trading this morning. My thoughts on Facebook are as follows. First, it is one...