Not So Hot Our previous commentary was titled “Bad News Bears”, but perhaps “Bad News Bulls” or “Good News Bears” would be a more appropriate description. Indeed, stock traders continued to obsess on future Fed rate hikes, with good news such as the strength in the...
Winter Is Coming The selling deluge continued with the S&P 500 losing 2.9% to finish at its lowest level since Christmas 2020. The storyline remained the same as the PCE, the Fed’s preferred inflation measure, rose a whopping 0.1% more than forecasters expected....
Last Week The stock market treaded water until Wednesday afternoon’s extraordinarily hawkish Fed statement and Chairman Powell’s grim press conference opened the selling floodgates. By the closing bell Friday, the S&P 500 was down -4.7%, the Nasdaq -5.1%, and the...
Inflationary Data vs. Deflationary Outlook The S&P 500 turned sharply lower, wiping out the previous week’s 3.7% gain plus another 1%, with a loss of 4.8% for the five-day session. The Nasdaq fared even worse, suffering a 5.5% decline, the Russell 2000 shed 4.5%,...
Weathering the Storm U.S. stocks snapped a three-week losing streak as the selling pressure abated and buyers, likely either bargain-hunting investors or short-covering traders, emerged. The market rose in three of the four sessions with only the oil and gas sector...
Consensus Pessimism Drives Our Optimism We are beginning to embrace the saying that “no news is good news” since the market has been reacting negatively to both good news and bad news. This suggests a pessimistic consensus among financial markets participants, and any...
Waiting on Wyoming The sell-off that started the previous Friday continued Monday, as concerns deepened over a more hawkish tone from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on the upcoming Friday at Jackson Hole. The market treaded water on very low volume Tuesday and...
Walmart Sales Up, Gas Prices Down The stock market rally ran out of steam, as the S&P dropped 1.2%, the Nasdaq declined 2.6%, and the Russell 2000 slid 2.9%. Most of the damage was on Friday, without any specific news to account for the mood swing. Of note, the...
The Rally Continues It’s getting better all the time Better (inflation) Better (consumer sentiment) Better (corporate earnings) Stocks rallied for the fourth straight week, with the S&P gaining 3.2%, the Nasdaq advancing 3.1%,and the Russell 2000 surging 4.9%. The...
An Economy Off Life-Support After much reflection we have come up with the novel concept that good news is actually good news. On Friday, the Labor Department reported that the U.S. economy added 528,000 jobs in July, more than twice as high as expected, and the...