Insights

It was a party in stock markets here and in Europe today in response first to the news that an agreement was reached whereby banks and other investors will take a 50% reduction in the value of their Greek bonds and that the EFSF will be leveraged up to buy Italian and...

The good feelings that many had developed over the last couple weeks about a package of reforms and bailouts for Greece, banks and European bonds took hits the last couple days on various news stories that a firm package might be only partially done by tomorrow's...

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is much more open since he retired from the Fed. CNBC quoted him today saying the Euro is bound to fail because the culture differences between northern and southern Europe are just too great. He said the initial hope was...

CNBC is reporting that the UK said there will be no European finance ministers meeting tomorrow. That’s why the market is dropping after being up. There will still be a summit meeting of European leaders but this is a curious development especially after no...

U.S. stock markets were only up 1% last week as a 2% Friday rescued what had been a down week. Friday's rally has carried into today with another 1.2% gain. It's a sign of how long things have been volatile when a 1% week is ho-hum. That's a 52% annual pace. Last week...

Stocks went back and forth from positive to negative today, trading on various rumors surrounding the weekend European Summit that markets hope will result in some sort of agreement on how to solve the Euro crisis. For example, the meeting is postponed, then an hour...

Stocks were down early until rumors apparently started to swirl and were confirmed by a Guardian (UK) report that France and Germany had agreed to leverage up the EFSF bailout fund to 2 trillion euros from 440 billion. Just before the close, Dow Jones said the 2...

On the Occupy Wall St. (OWS) protest, now spreading not only around the country but around the world students want to know why big, bad banks get bailed out but the government won’t bail students out from under huge student loans. The average student debt upon...

The market rallied the last two weeks on comments from German Chancellor Merkel and French PM Sarkozy that they had agreed to come up with a comprehensive plan to solve the Euro crisis, including dealing with Greece and ensuring that Eurozone banks were sufficiently...

The market has put in a 9-day run from the bottom of the recent trading to the top with only 2 or 3 days in that run that were basically flat. There was not one down day of any significance. The market is up 11%+, 15% if you go from the low intraday on 10/4. In the...