Friends This morning’s jobs report came in a little bit better than expected. 372,000 new jobs were created in June while the unemployment rate remained at 3.6%. This good news was met with modest selling in both the stock and bond market. Bonds remained lower for the...

Friends   The bulls are putting together a nice little winning streak this week. In these times it’s hard to attribute exactly what is giving market participants the green light. Again, is good news good news? Is bad news good news? What exactly is making bonds...

Friends   As the inflation vs recession narratives wage their battle, the markets continue to be unconvinced. After the recent move lower in interest rates, today bonds sold off pushing rates back up sharply. Both oil and gold continue to tumble, but oil ended...

Friends   So, what if I told you that the market narrative is no longer one of inflation but recession and even deflation. That’s right, in recent trading sessions we have seen interest rates tumbling, commodity prices plunging and market participants casting a...

Friends   On what figured to be a sparsely attended trading session, stocks were directionless for most of the morning, but as the day wore on things did improve. Stocks ended up nicely for the day, but what was more interesting was, and has been, the move in...

Friends   We all know the first half of 2022 is one we would sure like to forget about with regards to the markets (well, with regards to a lot of things but I’ll stay focused). We haven’t seen both bonds and stocks fall like this since 1970 (that’s a long time...

Friends   It’s like no one wants to take a stand before the end of the quarter and what might be a dicey earnings season coming up in July. We haven’t seen much interest on the buy side, but we also haven’t seen much conviction on the sell side of the ledger...

Friends   It looked like the bulls were prepared to hit the gas pedal on the quarter end rally this morning as the Dow moved nearly 500 points higher at the open. But things went downhill from there, sparked by more lousy consumer confidence data, and the Dow...

Friends   Though there were a few missteps along the way, stocks had a pretty good day. Chair Powell was on Capitol Hill once again today, this time wrestling with the House Finance Committee members, which is exhausting to watch. I can’t imagine the patience the...

Friends   After an early morning downdraft of more than 300 Dow points, stocks found some footing and the bulls were able to push the market averages into positive territory for most of the afternoon, only to fall back into negative territory by the close. Fed...

Friends   Before my annoying caveats that it’s just a bear market rally/dead cat bounce, it was nice to see stocks move decisively higher today on this first trading day of the week. After the last two weeks which saw stocks fall about 11% it was nice to remember...

Friends   The bulls fought hard to put up a gain, however modest it might be, but it wasn’t easy with a looming 3-day weekend. The S&P is now down 10 out of the last 11 weeks. That has only happened one other time ever, in 1970. I hope you were able to join...

Friends   Stocks continue to move lower as markets try to price in yesterday’s Fed action and the possibility of recession (we’ll talk about that tomorrow in our zoom call, make sure to join us). As we worried yesterday, the day following Fed rate hikes has not...

Friends   The Fed raised the Fed Funds rate .75% (75 basis points) this afternoon. The leak to the Wall Street Journal turned out to be accurate as the Fed, somewhat shocked by last week's CPI number, abandoned their plan to raise by 50 basis points. We haven’t...

Friends   It was another sloppy day for stocks after the bulls tried to rally the troops early in the trading session. Given that everyone is waiting on the Fed’s decision on interest rates tomorrow (and perhaps the speed and intensity of QT), it’s not surprising...