Insights

Stocks were nicely higher, then down, then up. Volatility is here to stay until Europe is squared away. S&P 500 - 0.8% DJIA 1.3% Sml Stocks 1.7% Europe 1.6% Asia MIXED Gold 1.0% Oil 2.3% Food 2.3% Bonds Up Dollar 0.2% Every one of those above indexes except the dollar...

The selling in stocks accelerated during the last hour and the S&P 500 finished about 2% lower. It has given back half the intraday advance since last Thursday and sits 2% above the closing low from a week ago, the low for the month. It is 4% above the intraday low...

New circuit breakers were announced yesterday that will apply to all US exchanges, including electronic exchanges. This was because the old ones triggering at 10%, 20%, 30% had not triggered in the last 20 years. Here are the new circuit breakers for stock markets. If...

After a brief rally, stocks turned down to continue yesterday PM's decline. For the first time in a long time everything on my index screen is red - stocks in the US, Europe and Asia, gold, the dollar and bonds. All are down less than 1% for the day. That is unusual...

Stocks gave up more than half their big gains late in the day, finishing up about 1%. That appears to roughly coincide with the news that a split is developing within the Eurozone. Some of the buying this week may be from end of the quarter buying after selling the...

OK; I'm back after taking a break Friday and Monday. Over the scary and volatile months of August and September this year the stock market has basically been in a trading range between 1,120 and 1,220 on the S&P 500. Moves within the range have been very sharp but...

Today's Drop We could use less excitement from this market. As I predicted yesterday, Asia and Europe fell hard when they opened today, and true to form it was European selling in our markets prior to 11 AM EST that got us off on a bad foot. By the end of the day it...

The Fed announced this PM that it was selling short-term securities to buy long-term. This is an effort to bring down long-term interest rates like mortgages, just as they have with short-term rates. The slang term for it is Operation Twist. Also, proceeds from...

Let me clear up the deception that the wealthy pay less in taxes than the rest of us, popularized by Warren Buffett's claim that his secretary pays more in taxes than he does. Pres. Obama brought this up when he announced his $1.5 trillion tax increase as a so-called...

Ben Bernanke had better announce something big tomorrow or the market will likely head lower. I think he most likely will, as I wrote in some detail yesterday. A Bernanke good report is being priced into stock prices, along with the report early today that the Greek...