Daily State of the Markets

Hard To Believe, But Greece Still in Focus

Good morning. As we enter the first full trading week of 2015, the immediate focus remains on Greece, the ECB, and oil while traders will no doubt be keeping an eye open for this week's all-important jobs report scheduled for Friday. In Europe, the upcoming Greek elections have ca…

Expectations for Stimulus May Aid Mood

Good morning. After a disappointing end to an otherwise strong year for the stock market in 2014, the mood appears to be improved on this first trading day of 2015. There are several stories capturing traders' attention on the topics of QE in the Europe, Eurozone PMI, and China's PMI data…

The New Year's Eve Line in the Sand

In addition to the usual focus on oil, traders have input from the ECB's Draghi and Chinese economic data to consider on this final day of trading in 2014. In China, the HSBC Manufacturing PMI came in with a reading of 49.6, which (a) represents the first decline in the final PMI …

The Focus Remains On Oil, Russia, and...

The song remains largely the same on this next-to last trading day of 2014 as the focus remains on Russia, oil, and Greece. Stocks continue to struggle in Russia with the major index losing nearly 10% yesterday and down another 2.4% today. On a chart basis, it would appear that a …

A Year of Underperformance - The Horror!

And so it goes. Now that the bull market is nearly six years old and has produced gains of more than 200 percent since March 9, 2009 (+213% to be exact), the popular press as well as a great many financial advisors appear to be climbing back aboard the buy-and-hold band wagon. We'…

Seasonality, Stabilization, and Oil are the Keys

With the majority of the world's major stock exchanges closed and traders in vacation mode, the day after Christmas has traditionally been a pretty slow day. However, with seasonality remaining strong and oil continuing to stabilize, the mood among those traders manning their posts today …

Looking For Stabilization

With most traders focusing on the important things in life this week, things are fairly quiet in the early going on this Christmas Eve. Perhaps the most important aspect of today is that the stock market closes at 1:00 pm eastern. Looking around at the news wires, there isn't much to repo…

What Do The Cycles Say About 2015?

With the Dow and S&P 500 now back at all-time highs (albeit by the skinniest of margins), and traders apparently following the seasonality play book, the question of the day is, where do we go from here? The first item of note is that although both of the blue chip indices did…

Can They Be Trusted?

The question of the day (in this business, sometimes knowing the question is more important than having the answer) is whether or not the current joyride to the upside, which has taken the S&P 500 up nearly 100 points (97.91 to be exact) or +4.96 percent in just 3 days, can be trusted…

Everything is Fixed Now, Right?

C'est la vie. Another dip in the stock market has been followed by another violent "V" bottom. One minute the S&P 500 is down 5 percent on fears of, well, just about anything and everything, and the next, the market is back to flirting with all-time highs. That's just the way the game…