The stock market is trading in narrower and narrower bands
Important observation out of Morningstar on Friday. While the Morningstar U.S. Market Index is up 15.4% from its bear-market low on October 14, the market is only 1.4% higher than it was at the end of November. AND in recent months, the stock market has been moving in...
Stocks struggle today as macro “facts” look more negative
As of the close in New York today, February 9, the Standard & Poor’s 500 was down 0.88% and the NASDAQ Composite was off 1.02%. That’s not a big absolute drop but it does mark quite a turnaround from earlier in the day. At 9:51 a.m. the S&P 500...
Will Netflix earnings on Thursday shock the market?
Right now Wall Street analysts project that on Thursday, January 19, Netflix (NFLX) will report earnings of just 44 cents a share for the fourth quarter of 2022. That would be a huge drop from the $1.33 the company reported in the fourth quarter of 2021. If Netflix...
Apple, Amazon, Alphabet,Adobe, Applied Materials and other big techs rally hard–rest of stocks not so much
Today, Monday November 29, it’s a tale of two bounces from Friday’s big sell off. Technology stocks and especially big technology stocks are up big. At the close in New York Applied Materials was up 5.53%. Adobe (ADBE) was ahead 3.83%. Nvidia (NVDA) was...
In today’s rally everyone loves risk–which isn’t necessarily a good thing
If you look only at the major indexes, today was a mildly positive day. The Standard & Poor’s 500 closed up 0.30%, although the Dow Jones Industrial Average was flat. The NASDAQ Composite gained 0.73% at the close and the NASDAQ 100 added 0.77%. The small...
Ho, hum: Another day another stock market record
Stocks climbed for a sixth straight day–the longest string of gains for the Standard & Poor’s 500 since August and with the Dow Jones Industrial Average turning in its best start for a February since 1931. The S&P 500 finished the day ahead 0.34%...
Today, Friday November 26, smacks of desperation–to catch up with the indexes
It was a short session today, the Friday after Thanksgiving, on Wall Street but that didn’t stop the Standard & Poor’s 500 and the NASDAQ Composite from setting new all-time records. The S&P 500 closed up 0.24%. The NASDAQ Composite finished...
Was yesterday the high tide for near-term optimism?
If you remember, my “calendar” listed a short-term post-election rally to be followed by a downward trending market into the early part of December. And then a renewed rally heading into January. I didn’t include yesterday’s coronavirus vaccine...
Slide in the afternoon doesn’t augur well for tomorrow
The NASDAQ Composite was down an already punishing 2.75% at noon in New York. But the damage wasn’t done for the day. The tech-heavy index closed the day down 4.11% And the big techs, the stocks that had driven the rally up and are now pacing the move down, sold...
This rally is built on the Powell Put and, now, the Vaccine Put–what could possibly go wrong?
Yesterday in my post “Now there are two Puts supporting the market as the Vaccine Put joins the Powell Put. Those two bets–that the Federal Reserve will continue to flood the financial markets with cash and will increase the flow if the markets start to...
Market passes baton back to Fed’s Powell Put for today’s rally
On Monday the Standard & Poor’s 500 and the NASDAQ Composite hit new all-time highs on what I’m calling the Vaccine Put, the hope that we’ll see the announcement of an approved coronavirus vaccine by early in 2021 or maybe even the end of 2020...
What rally? Yes, tech has zoomed but the average stock in the S&P 500 was still down 28% from its February peak as of the Friday close.
Forget about a “V-shaped” recovery or a “W-shaped” bounce-pullback-move up again recovery. The talk on Wall Street is now about a “K-shaped” recovery where a handful of companies and their shares sooar ahead but where the average...
Dancing around the 200-day moving average
At 3:00 p.m. New York time, the Standard & Poor’s 500 was up 0.33%to 3012.13. That, not so coincidently, is almost exactly the 200-day moving average for the index at 3012.39. Today, no big bounce after yesterday’s 5.89% drop for the index. Bargain...
What happens when computer trading programs and individual investors agree? You get a 6% drop in stocks
I don’t know who/what started the rout today, human beings or machines. But conditions were ripe for selling from both sources. On the human side, investors were looking at gains of 50% or more in the last month in stocks that had been crushed by the coronavirus...
Has the market broken it’s upward trend? I’m watching the big tech stocks as indicators
As of 12:30 p.m. New York time today, U.S. stocks had continued their downward move of yesterday. The Standard & Poor’s 500 was lower by 2.23% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average had tumbled 2.35%. The NASDAQ Composite was off 2.44% and the Russell 2000...
Down 3.58% yesterday; up 7.24% today–what does Netflix’s volatility mean for sellers or buyers?
On Tuesday after the close of trading Netflix (NFLX) smashed through fourth quarter projections by adding 8.76 million subscribers globally in the quarter. That easily beat analyst estimates for the quarter of 7.9 million new subscribers. For the quarter earnings came...
The first of four not so easy pieces for rebalancing any portfolio but specifically my long-term 50 Stocks Portfolio
In an ideal world, every stock market trend–up, down, sideways–would begin on January 1 and end on December 31. That would make an annual rebalancing of any portfolio as easy as falling off a madly spinning log in a Canadian logging festival. Most market...
Stocks start 2020 in melt-up mood
We’ve seen this before. And investors and traders seem determined to keep a good thing going–until it doesn’t work anymore. Today, January 2, the first trading day in the new year for U.S. markets, stocks were off to the rally races again. The...
Can earnings be the catalyst to take markets higher? Not this quarter, at least
Join me on my search for the elusive catalyst that could take U.S. stocks higher from what is already an all-time high. Quiet, though, catalysts can be very shy. Peaking through the bushes surrounding the water hole, I can see signs of company earnings. The big banks,...
Another analyst capitulates to “fear of being left out”
If this market runs out of bears, I think it’s in trouble. And today one of the market’s few remaining bears capitulated to the rally. Wells Fargo’s head of equity strategy Christopher Harvey hiked his year-end price target for the Standard &...
It’s a FOMO market
“Fear of missing out” is driving this stage of the market rally. Fund managers were under allocated to equities at the start of the year and are now playing catch-up with the indexes. And since the consensus is that the Federal Reserve has the...
S&P 500: Testing, testing at 2742
So far this is a normal pause. Stocks frequently pause, pull back, move up again, pull back again when they confront a major resistance level. So it’s not surprising that the Standard & Poor’s 500 took a breather today after the index closed at 2731...
Why I can’t put away my bear market worries #4: Consumer sentiment is becoming more negative
Most of the recent sentiment surveys show the same result: While sentiment about current conditions–AKA the present–remains strong, sentiment about conditions 6 to 12 months out is sliding in a pessimistic direction. The recent Bloomberg Consumer Comfort...
Why I can’t put away my bear market worries #3: Money flows that look like a bounce and not like a rally
Rallies share one very important pattern. In a rally more investors and traders want to jump in as prices rise. They’re convinced that rising prices mean that prices will climb even more in the future and so they buy, driving prices higher. Bounces follow a...
Testing, testing: Bounce, rally, or retreat?
U.S. stocks moved toward a key test today with the Standard & Poor’s 500 approaching the 2550 to 2600 level that signals the top of the recent volatility range and likely technical resistance. If the index breaks above this level, the market could run...
How good is Fed chair Jerome Powell at herding cats?
It’s an extraordinarily busy week for the Federal Reserve–verbiage wise. Saturday, January 5, John Williams, head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, Raphael Bostic of the Atlanta Fed, and Mary Daly of the San Francisco Red all spoke. Today, January 7,...
The key to this bear market–it’s global; and any turn about will have to be global too
If you’re trying to figure out this market–and who isn’t?–down 700 points on the Dow on Monday; up 1000 on Wednesday, down 400 points on Thursday before finishing up 250 points, I’d suggest starting with the observation that this bear...
Did Monday action signal a (temporary) bottom?
Monday’s big drop in U.S. stocks was unusual in this period of frequent market routs–and unusual in an important way. Even as the market has tumbled day after day, investors haven’t seen a big 90% down day of the kind that signals a (perhaps temporary) capitulation...
Nobody wants to get too far ahead of the news in this stock market
After yesterday’s bounce in riskier bounce-worthy stocks, today the U.S. market is seeing a slight pull back. At 1:30 p.m. New York time the Standard & Poor’s 500 is off 0.34% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average is lower by 0.05%. The NASDAQ...Jim’s Daily Email Alerts:
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