Friends We had a bit of a reversal day in the averages as stocks were down most of the day only to rally in the last hour to close in positive territory. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished the day up 68 points after being down over 175 points. The S&P 500 ended...

Friends The President gave a rousing speech last night. Unfortunately, the reality is that the markets don’t seem to believe much will get done. To put it mildly, the President was slightly vague on how he was going to pay for the initiatives he was touting, which, by...

Friends Even though we all have our minds on the anniversary of 9/11, and one would think that President Obama’s speech last night would dictate the direction of the market, the drop in stocks today was directly attributed to the mess in Europe. We had a member of the...

Friends Markets around the world got the news they wanted out of the German Courts, and it was “risk on” again, for one day anyway. Stocks in the U.S. were up at the opening and spent the rest of the day inching higher. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 275...

Friends You know September is off to an awful start when down 100 Dow points doesn’t seem too bad, considering that we were down more than 300 points on the Dow Jones Industrial Average early this morning. I hope we have more to look forward to this month than just...

Friends We just got the non-farm payroll number (jobs number) and unfortunately it was very disappointing. The new job creation for August was zero. That’s right, we created no jobs in August and no matter how they spin it, it is not a good sign for economic growth in...

Friends As we mentioned this morning, the non-farm payroll number was another body blow to sentiment, but knowing that the first half of the year GDP averaged only .70%, it really comes as no surprise. Economists have continuously indicated that we would need GDP to...

Friends Trading for August came to a close today and not a moment too soon. What a month we had. The final tally shows the S&P 500 down about 5.5% for the month after being up 5.97 points today to close at 1218.89. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished the day up...

Friends, A lot of news today, but not a lot of price action. This morning we received an awful consumer confidence number (the worst since April 09) which indicates that sentiment is deteriorating. After what we have had to witness in August (ugly politics, collapsing...

Friends, Stocks enjoyed a very nice rally today with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 254 points and the S&P 500 up 33 points to close at 1210. Even though volume was light, it was nice to see the S&P climb above the 1200 resistance level. If we can hold here for a...

Friends, Wall Street was preparing for two Hurricanes this morning. The first was Hurricane Bernanke whose speech at Jackson Hole, Wyoming was set to wreak havoc on the markets. Was there going to be an announcement of a QE3? As we pointed out earlier in the week, we...

Friends There were a lot of things for the markets to deal with today. First and foremost, there is a rather large hurricane bearing down on the east coast of the United States that looks like it will make landfall this weekend. There could be a lot of damage and...

Friends We finally got a little unwinding of the relentless fear trade today as both gold and Treasuries securities sold off and stocks rose. Gold was the story of the day falling as much as $100 per ounce at one point. Treasury yields rose as prices in Treasury bonds...

Friends The news of the day was the 5.9 magnitude earthquake that hit the east coast. Amazingly, it was felt all up and down the east coast as well as places as far away as Ohio and Michigan as well as Canada. Stocks were enjoying a nice day right before the quake,...

Friends “At the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe.” Recently, I had a request to include some more song titles and lyrics into the daily updates, and I thought what a better time than today, at the end of the third week of market mayhem...