Just when I thought we were about to see the final washout, the purge of all the excesses of the last five years, a real ‘selling climax’, they yanked the rug out from under me again last Thursday afternoon.Then, again, Wednesday and Thursday of last week may have been a feeble, but effective end to…
Category: Uncategorized
If everything is so good, why do we feel so bad?
The continuing, seemingly unwarranted concerns about oil prices, a triple witching event (stock index futures, stock index options and stock options expire the same day) which always roils the market coupled with year-end tax selling and portfolio adjustments on the part of institutional investors, made for an ugly Friday market. Oh yes, and just being a…
Session 140–Happy New Year!!
Unfortunately, some of the folks can’t go there, like the cheerful bloke, Greg Robb (Senior Economic Reporter for MarketWatch) who penned the following article … “Greek euro exit would be ‘Lehman Brothers’ squared: Economist (Barry Eichengreen, Economic Historian, U. C., Berkeley).” I think what Eichengreen meant, but was not made clear in the headline, was…
Session 124–What’s wrong with this picture?
A better question might be, ‘why does this picture appear as it does?’ The picture above is a less-than-stellar attempt to add a little class and culture to my post. The real picture I refer to is the interest rate picture. And, what appears to be wrong with that picture is rates have gone down, instead of…
Session 109–Fear and Loathing on Wall Street
It never ceases to amaze me how rapidly market sentiment can shift. Last week was a perfect example; from ‘Fear and Loathing’ at the beginning of the week to a “Calm sea and Prosperous Voyage” at weekend (May 23, 2014). Of course, when this happens it is usually the media driving the train, picking news…
Session 86–What planet does Randall Forsyth come from?
Randall Forsyth’s latest negative contribution to Barron’s (February 1, 2014) makes me wonder exactly what pool of market opinion he has been sampling. “January Goes Off the Script” poses the question: “Does a rocky start for the year spell doom for stocks in 2014?” I particularly like Forsyth’s loaded verbiage (i.e. DOOM) . The article…
Session 78–Apres Taper, What’s Next?
The confused nature of media reaction to the market’s move higher on last Wednesday’s Fed announcement on the taper of Quantitative Easing (QE), indicates they are totally lost. They can’t figure out why the market responded as it did, up nearly 300 points on the Dow. In my world it makes total sense. Here is…