State of the Markets
Four Reasons Buyers Are On Strike
Stocks have now declined for eight consecutive sessions, something that apparently hasn't happened since the bad old days of the credit crisis (and for the record, the S&P 500 hasn't fallen nine straight days in 36 years). In the process, the S&P has snapped trendlines, support zo…
Short Take: It's Getting Ugly Out There But...
It was a late night celebrating the cessation of 47 years of personal frustration with the Cubbies (I watched every game as a kid in 1969, still have the mug with the names Ron Santo, Don Kessinger, Glenn Beckert, Billy Williams, Jim Hickman, Randy Hundley, and of course, Ernie Banks embl…
Just Another Algo-Induced Freak-out, Or...
The traditional fall swoon appears to have taken hold of the stock market over the past week as "what if" fears regarding the outcome of the Presidential election are beginning to run rampant. Although reports indicate that Hillary Clinton's path to 270 electoral votes is not in jeopardy,…
And We're Back To That...
Good Monday morning and welcome back to the land of blinking screens. The key to the early trade today is easy to summarize as uncertainty has returned to the markets. The question, of course, is to what degree the election, the Fed, interest rates, and oil will spook the markets on this …
There Are Three Kinds of Lies...
As the saying goes, there are three kinds of lies. Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
This age-old cliché is especially true in this business as investors of all shapes and sizes regularly use statistics to prove their point and "talk their books."
One of the most i…
My Best Guess Is...
To be sure, it has been a long slog in the stock market for the past three months. In essence, stocks rallied hard on expectations of further monetary stimulus from the folks at the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, and the Bank of Japan after the BREXIT vote. However, after the…
Should We Be Worried About the Economy?
Going through the myriad of indicators and models I review each week, I was surprised to find that my primary economic model (which is developed and maintained by Ned Davis Research) had slipped from neutral to moderately negative this week. In fact, the current weekly reading of the mode…
Indicator Review: Stay The Course
Good Monday morning and welcome back. Let's once again start the week off by reviewing the state of our major indicators and models.
The first step is a review of the price/trend of the market. Here's my current take on the state of the technical picture...
There ca…
Par For The Course
The action remained "sloppy" on Thursday as once again, the early gains were met with selling. And if one looks closely at the charts, yesterday marked the sixteenth consecutive session where at least some sort of significant intraday selling took place. In other words, you have to go bac…
Here Is Something You CAN Worry About...
One of the keys to being successful in the stock market game is having the ability to remain objective. In short, it is critical to focus on what "is" happening in the market as opposed to what you think "should" be happening. It is employing the latter approach - especially when coupled …