Friends It’s Fed week. The Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meets tomorrow and Wednesday to decide what direction monetary policy will go, and market participants are watching and waiting intently. The narrative is that stocks have rallied in recent weeks in...

Friends Today’s retail sales number, ex-autos, was actually pretty good- and better than expected. Regardless, stocks simply had another very quiet day with just a little bit of volatility. By the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 17 points to finish...

Friends Once again, it was a somewhat quiet day for stocks, but this time with an upward bias. News of an oil tanker attack in the Middle East sent oil prices higher, but surprisingly did not send stock prices lower. On the economic front the weekly jobless claims...

Friends It was another quiet day for stocks with a slight bias to the downside. The Producer Price Index came in as expected and combined with the CPI, the inflation picture continues to be muted. With that the market’s odds that we see a Fed rate cut in July went up...

Friends   After an early morning lift, stocks finally ran into some selling pressure/profit taking. After the powerful rise in share prices over the past 6 trading sessions, it is almost comforting to see the brakes applied- at least for the moment. There was no real...

Friends A “deal” with Mexico late Friday set the stage for a rally this morning, and Nasdaq led the way. After about a 7% correction in May, the bulls have gotten their mojo back here in June and stocks are within shouting distance of all-time highs once again. By the...

Friends We had a clue earlier in the week that the employment picture might be softening when the ADP private payroll number came in much lower than expected. Today’s non-farm payroll number confirmed the weakness. Instead of the 185,000 new jobs that analysts had...

Friends It’s amazing what moves stocks these days-both up and down. Today stocks rallied on word that whatever tariffs were going to be initiated next week on Mexican goods is being delayed for the moment. Stocks moving up and down on tariff rumors is the world we...

Friends We had a nice follow through to yesterday’s rally as stocks once again posted nice gains during today’s trading session. Hopes that tensions with Mexico are being dealt with, and also the narrative flowing through the markets that the Fed is poised and ready...

Friends Stocks rallied today on hopes that trade tensions will lesson and on comments from Fed Chair Powell indicating that the Fed is prepared to act should trade wars cause economic damage. Stocks opened strong and added to their gains as the trading session wore...

Friends As you know, tariffs are the Presidents favorite blunt instrument to influence behavior, but markets aren’t particularly fond of them. The President’s threat to impose tariffs on Mexico if they don’t become more active/helpful in the immigrant crisis sent...

Friends Jim is out of the office this afternoon, here are how the markets ended. For the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 43 points to finish the day at 25,169. The S&P was up 5 points to close at 2,788. Gold was up $6 to trade at $1,292 per ounce,...

Friends The correction in stocks that we referred to yesterday was in full view today as headlines about the Chinese playing hardball and the Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s press conference, where he seemed to embolden the Democrats to seek impeachment proceedings,...

Friends Whether it is because of trade war consequences (likely) or simply that stocks are too expensive (not necessarily), stocks are experiencing a correction. We have many times in the past referred to market action as our guide as to just what we are experiencing...

Friends, Jim is out of the office this afternoon, here are how the markets ended. For the day the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 96 points to finish the day at 25,587. The S&P 500 was up 3 points to close at 2,826. Gold was down $1.20 to trade at $1,284 per...