Wow, it’s almost Labor Day! Time flies. While Labor Day benchmarks all sorts of things for us—the start of school, the end of summer, the beginning of football season—for Wall Street, it means the “summer doldrums” are over and the vacationing professional traders are coming back to work. Read the rest of this entry »

While the S&P 500 has basically been range-bound for most of 2010, the bond market is another story entirely. Yields on the benchmark 10-year Treasury bond have fallen rapidly in the last few months to about 2.61% as of Friday’s close. For perspective, I asked in April, “Would you lend the U.S. government your money for 4%?” Things change quickly, indeed. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re going to skip the market commentary this week and review a conversation that I was a part of last week. The topic isn’t economic or market related. Rather, it revolved around how we think of our money. I was speaking with a financial advisor whose client was preparing to transfer a 401(k) to an IRA account. The client’s concern on moving the account now was the market. Specifically, this investor was concerned with “starting off the new account on the wrong foot if the market declines.”
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The two-sided coin with positive earnings news on one side and weak economic news on the other side continued to spin last week. On the positive side, earnings reports remained strong, and the earnings were supported by revenue growth, not cost-cutting alone. On the flipside, the weak economic news was centered on jobs. Read the rest of this entry »

If you ever got the feeling that economists were painting too rosy of a picture during the recession and the ensuing recovery, you were right. On Friday, the Commerce Department released Q2 2010 GDP and also updated GDP values back to 2007. The good news is that the economy is still expanding at an annual rate of 2.4%. Read the rest of this entry »

Good earnings reports trumped economic news last week, and stocks rallied strongly to break the recent downtrend line that had been in place since April. Fed head Ben Bernanke gave the markets a short bout of concern mid-week when he characterized the outlook for the economy as “unusually uncertain,” but the negative sentiment quickly faded as corporate results continued to come in strong. Read the rest of this entry »

Earnings reports started to flow steadily from corporate America last week, and results were generally good. In contrast, investor reaction to the reports was fairly tepid. Let’s jump straight into the numbers. Industry heavyweights reported last week. According to Barron’s, earnings grew 76% at JP Morgan Chase (JPM) and 51% at railroad company CSX (CSX). Tech bell-weather Intel (INTC) beat most analysts’ estimates on profits, and, believe it or not, posted record revenues. Think about that: Intel had never achieved quarterly sales as high as they did in the last quarter. Read the rest of this entry »

When playing poker, experts look for something they call a “tell” in their opponents. It could be a certain frown, or a sigh, or pursed lips or any number of other subtle things an opponent does when he is either feeling like he has a good hand or a bad hand. The expert then tries to exploit that “tell” to win hands of cards. Read the rest of this entry »

I hope you had a wonderful Independence Day. I know that I caught up on plenty of rest and relaxation while leaving a little time for celebration as well. Prior to the celebrations, though, investor nervousness took major domestic stock markets to new yearly lows. While unwelcomed, this wasn’t a huge surprise. After all, traders focused on the short term usually sell prior to long holiday weekends and volumes decline. Read the rest of this entry »

The long awaited financial reform bill that has been in the making for almost two years looks like it is almost complete. It has yet to be voted on by the full Congress, but the bill has made it out of conference and will likely be signed into law before President Obama’s deadline of July 4th. Read the rest of this entry »