Friend   The pundits keep calling for recession and the economy keeps resisting. Today’s ISM and Factory Orders numbers were better than expected and added to last Friday’s better than expected jobs number, the backdrop just doesn’t spell recession – at least not yet....

Friends   The non-farm payroll number came in a little hotter than expected with 263,000 jobs created in November vs. the 200,000 estimates. Average hourly earnings also came in a littler hotter than expected and the unemployment rate remained at 3.7%. Of course,...

Friends   Concerns about shutdowns in China and supply chain disruptions along with hawkish comments from several Fed officials help set a gloomy landscape for stocks today.  Market participants are trying to figure out if interest rates are going higher as Fed...

Friends   Today’s release of this month’s Fed minutes seemed to indicate that the Fed might be close to slowing down interest rates hikes after the upcoming December meeting. Given that most traders are heading home for the Thanksgiving Holiday early, stocks...

Friends Today felt like a trading day during a holiday shortened week. Stocks moved higher right from the opening bell and were able to methodically add to their gains throughout the trading session. Bond yields moved lower and that has been the recipe for higher...

Friends Ok, we did see a little volatility in stocks (a lot of volatility in oil) but for the most part it felt like market participants were off preparing for Thanksgiving instead of participating in today’s trading session. As mentioned, oil had quite a ride from...

Friends Stocks mainly spent the week digesting last week’s massive rally after the CPI number came out. Fed officials continue to talk tough, but once again it appears that market participants still think that we’ve seen the peak in inflation and that rate hikes will...

Friends A pretty good retail sales number (Target and their problems notwithstanding), helped dampen the enthusiasm of market participants this morning. Remember, good news is bad news right now when it comes to economic data points as market participants want the...

Friends   Buoyed by another better-than-expected inflation number, stocks moved smartly higher at the open today and were firmly in positive territory until word that an errant missile or two appear to have struck Poland in the ongoing conflict between Ukraine...

Friends The bulls tried to continue last week’s rally, but it appears that the buyers just ran out of ammunition by the close of trading today. Given the surge higher by the market averages late last week, it is probably a moral victory that we didn’t give a bigger...

Friends It was a quiet day of trading as the bond market was closed for Veteran’s Day, but the bulls were able to fend off any attempts by the bears to tarnish yesterday’s massive rally. By the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 33 points to finish the day...

Friends   We mentioned yesterday that as negative as investors were positioned, that if today’s inflation data was better than expected you could see a robust rally. Well, the data was better than expected and we got a robust rally in both stocks and bonds. The...

Friends   It wasn’t exactly a red wave now, was it? It does appear that the Republicans will gain control of the House of Representatives by a very slim margin, while the Senate is still not decided (it may take until December before we know). Probably more...

Friends   As voters were casting their ballots today, stocks moved higher for the most part. We should have election results in this evening, or tomorrow morning, or- well who knows. Anyway, it is expected that the Republicans will take the House while the Senate...

Friends   There was more selling this morning after yesterday's Fed action, but by the afternoon stocks had erased most of those losses. But in the end stocks moved lower into the close leaving the bears back in control of the high ground as we await tomorrow’s...