The big questions for U.S. markets today: Will Monday's huge crash mark the beginning of a major market correction? Or will we have a great “Turnaround Tuesday” that saves our badly beaten portfolios from certain disaster?
Wednesday’s headline risk does a 180 as stocks rebound on, what? More fake news? Or do traders recognize the DC political nonsense means nothing?
Despite an anemic final trading week, 2016’s Trump-Santa Claus Rally was an investing thrill ride. So how will stocks, bonds launch 2017?
Wednesday’s low-volume downer of a trading day may help assure that confidently predicted record Dow close above the magic 20,000 handle doesn’t happen.
WASHINGTON, June 17, 2016 – It’s been one truly strange Wall Street week, as dueling narratives—federal government lies vs. political reality on the ground—are driving more traders to head for the exits this week. For the most part. Thursday’s trading action saw markets tanking big-time, until, bizarrely, the tragic assassination of Jo Cox, a pro-EU ...
WASHINGTON, May 31, 2016 – The merry, merry month of May is limping to a month-end close in Tuesday Wall Street trading action. As of 2:30 p.m. EDT, all three widely followed stock averages—the Dow Jones Industrials, the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ—are off sharply, with the Dow taking the worst hit, currently sitting at ...
WASHINGTON, April 4, 2016 – As of the final hour of trading, Monday’s insane market moves are making it seem as if trading firms, funds and HFTs alike forgot that April Fool’s Day was Friday and not today. A continuing and rapid drop in the price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil from its market-exciting ...
WASHINGTON, March 4, 2016 – It’s getting really hard to know what’s driving this market. Headed for apocalyptic disaster not ten trading days ago, the major averages suddenly did a 180 just a few trading days ago. Now it seems there’s no stopping them as they assume their formerly accustomed trip back up into the ...
WASHINGTON, Feb. 17, 2016 – Many stocks and stock sectors continued to rise in Wednesday trading, tacking on another win to Tuesday’s festivities. That’s pretty good for a holiday-shortened trading week, at least thus far. But aside from a Saudi-Russian “oil freeze” agreement that’s mostly hot air, when it comes to hard information on the ...
WASHINGTON, February 11, 2016 – It’s getting really hard to write this daily column that describes the background and the action in the (once) wonderful world of stocks and bonds. Bears have been running rampant on Wall Street since the first trading day of 2016 and the carnage has already become considerable. The death and ...
WASHINGTON, February 7, 2016 – Sunday night, along with Mrs. Maven, yours truly watched a moderately interesting “historical” show via Amazon Prime. The rather interesting and more or less true subject concerned those ancient Viking “special forces” units known as “the berserkers.” These fearsome warriors were known for their crazed, lethal pursuit of the enemy ...
WASHINGTON, January 28, 2016 – Wednesday’s rally and subsequent post-Fed minutes smackdown are already history. Thursday’s trading action thus far is much the same for completely different non-reasons. At the 9:30 a.m. opening bell, the market opened wildly up in full irrational exuberance mode as this morning’s hot story gripped traders and HFTs with a ...
WASHINGTON, Jan. 13, 2016 – It might as well be Friday the 13th, not Wednesday, given the latest of this month’s serial disasters for traders and investors alike. After a bright, happy opening surge by hopeful bulls, the early buying surge, building on Tuesday’s positive action, soon proved to be a wasted effort. The Dow, ...
WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 – Back some years ago, there was a TV show called “Spin Control,” based, of course, right here in Washington, D.C. where “spinning” bad news into good to help out the party in power is a way of life. Today’s so-called job creation numbers reported here are a case in point. The ...
WASHINGTON, Dec. 21, 2015 – Short column today as Mr. and Mrs. Maven prepare for a short jaunt to Colonial Williamsburg, just downstate from the nation’s capital. After 2015’s brutal market beating, we both figure it’s time to recharge those batteries, the better to prepare for what’s likely to be an even weirder 2016 in ...
WASHINGTON, November 11, 2015 – The Maven, and indeed, many other long-time professional investors, have been bad-mouthing the 2015 trading action in stocks, well, since about mid-January 2015 to be precise. The aimless churning and periodic but furtive bull moves in all averages have been just enough to suck the unwary—including us at times—back in, ...
WASHINGTON, October 27, 2015 – Tuesday morning’s futures indicated we’d have a lower opening trade, and at the bell, the markets quickly obliged. Trading has been dull to limp and the averages have slowly but inexorably sunk deeper and deeper into the Slough of Despond. It’s been like our favorite theatrical metaphor, “Waiting for Godot, ...
WASHINGTON, October 21, 2015 – The eagerly-anticipated IPO of the costly Italian automaker Ferrari was priced Tuesday evening at $52 per share—the high end of its estimated range. As predicted, the stock popped during this morning’s opening trade, briefly hitting $60 per share before settling back in the $56 dollar range. The Ferrari action (TRIGGER ...
Trump’s tax plan gains some favor, but commodities, China, the Middle East, and ongoing Federal Reserve bafflegab keep the tone negative on Wall Street.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 22, 2015 – Today is the first day of fall, and fall is just what stocks are doing, following Monday’s bizarre day, which started out bullish but was promptly derailed that afternoon by a typically clueless tweet from the Democrats’ faltering, alleged front-runner for the next presidential sweepstakes. Price gouging like this in ...