Routine & Healthy Consolidation in Play
Last Friday, we saw the S&P 500 tick at all time highs for a few seconds. That’s anything but unexpected and certainly not newsworthy. What was “different this time” was that it was the only major index to score new highs before they all reversed sharply to the downside. That made calling for an overall market pullback fairly easy. Over the past few days, the high flying, momentum driven tech stocks, like Google Netflix and Amazon have come under strong […]
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Date: March 26, 2014
Dr. Copper May Be Terminally Ill, But…
What should be big news isn’t getting that much play and that’s the total collapse in copper prices, mostly due to China’s weakening economy. Copper has long been called Dr. Copper or the commodity with a PhD in economics because it was a good forecasting tool. Since late 2010, that all changed and it’s likely because of China’s influence on that market. Copper has completely collapsed on a short-term basis, semi-collapsed on an intermediate-term basis and is on the verge […]
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Date: March 23, 2014
Ben Bernanke Cringing
New Fed chair, Janet Yellen, presided over her first FOMC meeting this week with her first press conference yesterday afternoon. In short, as much as I supported her for the position, it’s crystal clear that she is no Ben Bernanke and has much to learn. On the positive side, she was very calm and took time to give thoughtful and detailed answers. I especially liked when she stated that the glide path to tighter monetary policy was going to be […]
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Date: March 20, 2014
Janet Yellen’s First Fed Statement Day
My how time flies! We just said goodbye to Ben Bernanke and hello to Janet Yellen and now it’s time for Fed day again. It is widely expected that the FOMC will taper another $10 billion to $55 billion per month in quantitative easing as it continues down the path to wrapping up QE by the end of the year. There is also an expectation that the Fed changes their interest rate scenario from quantitative to qualitative with Yellen giving […]
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Date: March 19, 2014
The Fall of the House of PIMCO… The Bill Gross Saga
Overview of PIMCO Over the years, Pacific Investment Management Company or PIMCO has been the global leader in fixed income or bond management. Their Total Return Bond Fund was the largest mutual fund in the world with roughly a quarter of a trillion dollars until ceding to Vanguard late last year. It was the standard by which competitors were judged and dominated the 401K market. Although now owned by giant insurer Allianz, PIMCO has essentially been an autonomous unit since […]
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Date: March 16, 2014
Bears Growl as Line in the Sand Breached
As I look back at the titles of the posts this week, I see “Stocks Looking to Rest”, “Bulls Hanging in During Tug O’ War” and “Bears Creeping In”. It was hard not to at least lean to bearish side. Until Thursday although prices were lower, the bulls fought hard. But on Thursday, the flood gates opened with some major league selling in the indices. On the sector front, all were sharply lower with the exception of utilities and precious […]
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Date: March 13, 2014
Bears Creeping In
In yesterday’s update, I drew two short-term lines in the sand, looking for the major indices to close below Monday’s low or above last week’s high to signify the next move. Yesterday, we saw the Dow and S&P 500 stay above Monday’s low, but the S&P 400 and Russell 2000 closed below Monday’s low. That leaves us leaning in the bearish direction awaiting full confirmation. Leadership from biotech, REITs and utilities has started to wane, but the financials are trying […]
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Date: March 12, 2014
Bulls Hanging In During Tug o’ War
All of the ingredients were in place for one of those quick, sharp down days on Monday with a plethora of geopolitical news. From poor economic news out of China to continuing saga in Crimea and the Ukraine to the still missing aircraft, all the excuses were there. And while stocks sold off early in the day, a similar story over the past few years played out; the bulls slowly and steadily stepped up to trim the losses. After four […]
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Date: March 11, 2014
Stocks Looking to Rest
Stocks begin the week needing to breathe after an overwhelming 7 days of news all over the landscape. Last week at this time the globe was worried about World War III but ended the week with a better than expected employment report. The bull market remains old and wrinkly, but very much alive. At this point there are no serious warning signs that the bear wants to come out of hibernation. Furthermore, there aren’t even any warning signs that a […]
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Date: March 9, 2014
Here We Go Again… Jobs Friday
Wasn’t it just yesterday that we were talking about the monthly employment report? Well, we’re here again! With back to back weak reports blamed on “weather”, stocks are set up to rally on a good report that gets past weather and a bad but not atrocious report that blames “weather”. It must be nice to have the “weather” fall back on. I may have to try that with clients. Credit a good quarterly report on our skills, but blame a […]
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Date: March 7, 2014
