Friends The 4th quarter GDP came in at 2.8%, which was a slight disappointment to traders who were hoping for a number north of 3%. Still, that is just about what we expected and quite a bit better than we would have hoped for just six months ago. In the meantime,...

Friends As traders tried to absorb the likely consequences of the Fed’s actions (statements) yesterday, we got a lot of economic and earnings news today. On the economic front, we got a better than expected durable goods report and a less than stellar housing number....

Friends If you had a chance to watch the State of the Union address last night, you might have come away with the same impression that I did. We have a lot of work to do. Politics over the next couple quarters is likely to get even uglier, so buckle up. In the...

Friends Dr. Bernanke basically told us today that interest rates will be at zero for the rest of our lives (The Fed announcement actually indicated towards the end of 2014, but who’s counting). The takeaway from today’s Fedspeak was that they anticipate very slow...

Friends Starting tomorrow we will get a string of earnings reports that should set the tone for stocks over the remainder of the week. We got a somewhat disappointing report from Halliburton this morning, and will get Texas Instruments after the close today. Tomorrow,...

Friends As traders wait for a resolution on Greek debt, the focus was on earnings today. We had a bevy of tech earnings after the close yesterday, including good reports from IBM, Microsoft and Intel and one awful report from Google. In addition to many regional bank...

Friends, Stocks continued their quiet but deliberate climb today with the Dow Jones Industrial Average gaining 45 points to finish the day at 12,623. The S&P 500 was up 6 points to close at 1314. Gold was down $3.20 to trade near the $1656 area, and oil was again...

Friends After a calm 60 point advance in the Dow Jones Industrial Average yesterday, traders followed up yesterday’s move with another 96 points to the upside today with the Dow finishing the day at 12,578. The S&P 500 was up 14 points to close at 1308, which was the...

Friends, The markets had a lot of things to deal with today. Before the open, we got earnings from J. P. Morgan Chase which were ok, but did not really set a very good tone for the day. Bank shares had bounced nicely the first couple of weeks of the year, but this...

Friends Two very quiet days of trading. Today we ended positive after an early morning selloff, but for the most part we have just been drifting so far this week. Quite frankly, I am just fine with that. For the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 21 points...

Friends Another day with a distinctly positive bias, but very calm in nature. Buoyed by a Chinese market that bounced overnight and early strength in the Euro, traders bid stocks up right at the opening this morning, and we spent the rest of the day trying to hold on...

Friends Off to another painfully slow start to the week as stocks limped along on very low volume all day long (yes we were up, but believe me it was boring). For the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 32 points to close at 12,392. The S&P 500 was up 2...

Friends, The non-farm payroll number was a pleasant surprise this morning as the U. S. economy produced 200,000 new jobs in the month of December. The unemployment rate fell to 8.5%. Good day for the markets, right? Wrong. It looks like the traders made all their buys...

Friends We had some good news on the employment front this morning with the ADP private sector job number coming in at a whopping 325,000 new jobs for December (whopping for recent times anyway). In addition, the weekly new unemployment claim number once again came in...