Friends After a few days of weakness in bonds and gold, both held firm today as stocks continue to fight their way higher. Even without the crutch of Apple (which actually went down a little today after touching $600 per share at the open) stocks were able to advance....

Friends The Dow closed up 16 points to finish at 13,194 while the S&P fell back just 2 points to close at 1,394. Oil dropped $1.13 today to $105.58. The big move of the day was a $51 loss on gold which ended near $1643. Have a nice evening everyone.

Friends What a difference a week makes. Last Tuesday stocks suffered their first big losing day of the year with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling over 200 points for the day. Today, powered by the shorts getting squeezed and bold action from JP Morgan’s Jamie...

Friends Not much happening on this Monday, as traders wait for tomorrow’s Fed meeting to begin. In the meantime, only defensive areas such as drugs and consumer staples showed modest upside as the market in general was painfully quiet. After the adrenaline rush of...

Friends Today marks the 3 year anniversary of the market bottom that was put in back on March 9th, 2009. Since then, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has risen 97%. After the debacle of 2008 and early 2009, it has been quite a climb back. Also, one year ago today,...

Friends As we wait with baited breath to see if the Greek bond swap deal goes through (to determine if they are bankrupt today or next month), stocks had a second good day after Tuesday’s shellacking. For the day the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 70 points to...

Friends The only major economic news today was Apple’s new iPad rollout and the ADP employment number which came in as expected with around 215,000 new jobs for February. Perhaps this sets the tone for Friday’s government employment number. Stocks bounced back some...

Friends After last year’s volatility, we had gotten through more than two months of trading this year without a down day of more than 100 Dow points. Today finally ended that streak. With worries that the bond swap deal in Greece may fall short of the amount needed to...

Friends Another day that could have been much worse, ends up being nothing more than a minor nuisance to the bulls. For the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, after being down nearly 90 points early in the morning, finished with a loss of 14 points to close at...

Friends Today was a very quiet day in the markets with a slight downward bias. As we dance around the 1370 in the S&P, traders seem undecided as to which way we are heading next. In the meantime, there was no market moving news to deal with and for the day, the Dow...

Friends Once again, we had a lot of news today, but a mixed reaction among markets. Along with a nice weekly jobless claims number (351,000) and a “so-so” personal spending number (.2%), we got surprisingly strong retail sales numbers from many of the nation’s largest...

Friends Today was a day of totally mixed messages. On one hand, we had an upward revisal to the 4th quarter GDP number and a very strong Chicago PMI number. On the other hand, Dr. Bernanke’s testimony in front of Congress was disturbing to the “risk on” crowd, as the...

Friends Well, the Dow finally held and closed above 13,000 and the S&P 500 above 1370 for the first time since the summer of 2008. On the economic front, the durable goods number was disappointing this morning as well as the Case-Shiller index (which indicated that...

Friends The bull market pattern continues. After being down 100 Dow points early this morning, stocks once again had a nice reversal and finished the day just about flat. This pattern has been in place so far this year, with stocks opening lower and recovering as the...

Friends, Hovering around the 13,000 milestone again, traders appeared lackluster as stocks see-sawed much of the day despite the latest dose of data – upbeat consumer sentiment news. The Dow eased back just 2 points at 12,983 while the S&P tallied 2 points to finish...