Friends, It seems like we have seen this movie before. The markets continue to focus on the problems in Greece, as the Eurozone folks try to come up with a way to continue to delay what seems like the inevitable. At some point, the world will have to actually deal...

Friends, As you know, we have been talking about the liquidity vs. reality story for two and a half years now. We have said repeatedly, don’t fight the Fed. As long as Dr. Bernanke and the Fed were going to provide endless amounts of liquidity, stocks and bonds were...

Friends The just reported jobs number was extremely disappointing, but not that surprising after we got a heads up on Wednesday from the ADP number that job creation has slowed. Along with that, the unemployment rate is ticking back up with the reported number today...

Friends May ended up being a very choppy month with a negative bias for the markets. We saw commodity prices fall drastically early in the month, but as the month came to a close, many commodity prices were climbing slowly higher. Stocks ended up down 1.4% for the S&P...

Friends The markets continue to be sloppy as we approach this holiday weekend. Stocks have had a downward bias in May as economic numbers continue to show a very slow growth environment (if, indeed, you can call it growth at all). The S&P 500, for the time being, is...

Friends For those of you who had the opportunity to watch the business channel CNBC over the past 22 years, today’s announcement that Mark Haines has died gives me that feeling that I have lost a family member. I have watched Mark since day one of his groundbreaking...

Friends The good news is that Consumer Staple and Healthcare stocks (of which we here at CHJ have been fans of for a few years now) have been moving to yearly highs in recent days. The bad news is that Consumer Staple and Healthcare stocks have been moving to yearly...

Friends Stocks have had a somewhat sloppy week as traders try to decide if the recent bounce in the dollar is going to last or be very short-lived. As we know, the 2 year bull market has been built on a weakening dollar. We have seen the balance sheets of U. S....

Friends Markets had a difficult day today with the slight rally in the dollar producing a selloff in commodities (oil and silver crushed again) and an overlapping selloff in industrial, energy and material stocks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the day down...

Friends Talk about letting the air out of a bubble. Oil dropped $10 per barrel today to end the day around $99 per barrel. We were looking at $115 just a week or so ago. And how about silver, down almost $5 today to just over $34 per ounce. Last week we were looking...

Friends We had a pleasant surprise this morning with the release of the non-farm payroll number. After the last several weeks of less than stellar economic reports, the government jobs number was an increase of 244,000 new jobs. That was quite a bit better than the...

Friends As we prepare for a new week of trading, the report of the death of Osama Bin Laden is trumping all other news, economic or otherwise. Americans feel pretty darn good this morning and as far as the markets are concerned, that sure can’t be a bad thing. So much...

Friends What a difference a week makes. For that matter, what a difference a few days makes. Last Friday a grumpy Mr. Market let us know that he meant business. After a handful of earnings reports, which began with Alcoa and mixed in a couple of banks such as Bank of...

Friends The rating agency S&P reaffirmed the United States debt rating at AAA this morning, but put the U. S. on a negative credit watch. What does this mean? Well, if the folks in Washington don’t address the mounting debt problems in this country then the inevitable...

Friends, Mr. Market seems a bit grumpy these past several days. Earnings season has begun, and it sure looks like companies are going to have a difficult time pleasing traders over the next couple of weeks. Hitting your numbers is simply not going to be good enough...