Introducing 2.0 At the beginning of the year I began writing my next literary effort, and as stated on the back cover of my first endeavor, “Don’t expect to see a sequel. Lose Your Broker Not Your Money has it all, including an unparalleled guarantee of performance and support via a totally free website…” In other words,...Read More
With the recent release of GDP numbers for year ended 2013 it’s an appropriate time to update the action zone – the historical trading range for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The action zone is a dynamic range affected by ever changing conditions such as inflation, economic activity, and stock market multiples. It’s meant to...Read More
Stocks continued their downward trend this week but the move was muted by an overreaction to 4th quarter GDP numbers that were released on Thursday. Growth for the fourth quarter 2013 was announced to be an annual pace of 3.2% in Real terms. However… Growth for the year of came in at just 1.3% – a...Read More
“The market” slipped on a banana peel this week and fell 579 points, or 3.5%; “strength” lost just 0.7%, and gold added 1.1%. Speculation about the cause of the adjustment is swirling, with many taking heads blaming it on deteriorating conditions in Emerging Markets. First things first… The Dow Average has been trading much higher...Read More
Stocks remained largely unchanged this week as December activity for wages and prices were reported. The Producer Price Index (PPI) for finished goods rose .4%; CPI (Consumer Price Index) rose .3%, and Real hourly earnings fell .3% in the period. That’s prices up (a.k.a. inflation) and earnings down in America, and when the topics of...Read More
It’s a brand New Year, and while researching this week’s blog I was reminded that it’s the same old story. In my travels I was drawn to two Wall Street Journal articles that appeared on-line over the weekend. They were advertised as such: How to Beat the Market Without Even Trying How to Find a...Read More
A pitiful jobs report added to a persistently weak employment market this week when just 74,000 jobs were added to the December payroll – typically a strong month for job market performance driven by the holiday shopping season. Despite the weakness in jobs, the unemployment rate dropped to 6.7% (from 7%). How could this be?...Read More
So the word on the Street is “clear”: stocks are surging because the economy is getting stronger, the falling unemployment rate is further proof, and QE is being tapered because of it; and all of this is causing yields to rise. These things, they say, are indicative of a stronger dollar and a strengthening market...Read More
The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis revised third quarter GDP growth up to 4.1%; the previous estimate had market activity increasing 3.6% for the period. GDP estimates helped distract “the market” from other news and sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average surging up 3%, to 16,221; gold dropped another 3% on the same reports, and...Read More
After falling fractionally for five consecutive sessions the Dow Jones Industrial Average got almost all of it back on the last trading day of the week. It closed Friday up 199 points to 16,020 (a 22% gain for the year) on a stronger than expected jobs report and an upward revision to third quarter GDP,...Read More
