State of the Markets
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…
Forget Oil, Is It All About Russia Now?
Worries abound in the stock market these days as traders fret about the price of oil, deflation, high yield bonds, the global banking system, the economies of Europe, China, and Japan, what the Fed will do next (and when), and Russia. It's that last one that seems to be attracting the mos…
Will Oil Trigger The Next Bear Market?
Oil continued to collapse on Friday, taking the stock market down with it. And while there were other stories that attracted some attention at the end of last week, including London's airspace being closed and a downgrade of France's sovereign debt rating, there can be little argument tha…
Making Sense of the Oil/Stock Linkage
If your response to yesterday's trash job in the stock market was something along the lines of, "Wait, what?" you are likely not alone. Tuesday the stock market dove 220 points in the early going and then recovered almost all of it into the close. Thus, it looked like the dip buyers appea…