12.23.2014

Oh look...the futures are rising!  Imagine that.

Yesterday, on an incredibly low volume session, the market pushed for new highs. They are so desperate to make it look like life is grand in the US that they've decided that we should probably end the year at all time highs.

Yesterday marked something like the 50th "new high" for the year.

12.22.2014

Good morning all, welcome to Christmas week!

For the most part the Christmas week generally brings us a low volume move slightly higher. Most of the upper level traders are already in the Hamptons celebrating the Holiday's, leaving the junior traders to "don't do anything stupid".

But because the volumes are so low, it is fairly easy for a single big order to order to move the underlying stock, so we oft times see outsized moves in single issues.

I love the idea of people making money from Wall Street. All the 401K's and IRA's that are increasing because of the rising market is indeed a good thing on the personal level. What disturbs me however is that most people really don't quite understand why this is happening.

12.5.2014

Good morning all, welcome to Friday and the big jobs report.

Yesterday the market stumbled itself into a slightly red close, not able to muster the firepower to continue moving higher. then overnight the Japanese yen fell again to  insanely low levels and that got global markets fired up, as they continue to use the Yen as a carry trade for of course...creating more debt instruments.

Thanksgiving is my favorite Holiday and luckily the market is usually quite generous during Thanksgiving week too. So our guess is that we'll continue the sideways and up move that we've seen lately. The worlds Central Bankers are "all in" on the idea, and unless we get a classic Black swan event, or the CB's decide to pull the rug, we "should" just continue to levitate this week. We're "leaning long and keeping our finger near the sell button"

11.24.2014

Good morning all, welcome to Thanksgiving week. As you might guess, the market will be open Wednesday, but by 11 am, the day will effectively be "over". Then we're closed Thursday and we're only open for half a day on Friday.

Historically the market does well this week and this time should be no different. If they weren't about to roll the market over with all the chances it had last week, they probably won't this week either. So, we should expect a slow grind higher.

Happy Veterans day folks. Today the Bond market is closed for the Holiday, but of course the criminal stock market is open for business. I would have hoped that they could put Wall street on hold for a day, but no.....money trumps everything.

NOTE>>!!!

Next Saturday, November 15th, I’ll be traveling to Scottsdale Arizona for the “Financial Fest” being held at the Westin Kierland Resort. So for any of you who live in the area, please come on by and say hello. The event is free, it runs from 8 am to 4 pm, and we’ll be doing a couple live talks. It’s going to be a fun day and I look forward to meeting you!

All The Tricks

One of the interesting things about putting out a newsletter for almost 20 years is that we've covered so many topics that you really can't even remember half of them. Think about the sheer numbers for a minute.

Late last night the news hit that the Doctor in NY who showed Ebola symptoms had indeed tested positive for the disease. Naturally that's going to create a certain level of fear in the city. The only "good" thing you can say is that down in Dallas, it doesn't seem to have spread exponentially, so there's some comfort in thinking this guy probably hasn't infected the masses either.

10.23.2014

Here we go again....

After four days of intense buying, the market was short term overbought, and quite stretched. It needed a pause day, and yesterday was it. They blamed oil, they blamed the strange shooting situation at the Canadian Parliament. But we tend to think they were excuses rather than reasons.

All night long the futures were soggy. Over in Europe most of the indexes were slightly red. But then they got the juice they needed.