Insights

It's been volatile but the stock market after opening in line with yesterday's drop rallied nicely. Several of the last few days have had drop or pops as the 5 day chart to the left shows. The market so far is only slightly higher than it was yesterday but that's OK....

Yes, I know, more about Greece. But, Greece is center stage in the investment world right now. It is having trouble getting an austerity package done with enough credibility to make its European lenders comfortable. Soft deadlines keep passing and German and other...

February is usually one of the poorer months for stocks and according to Art Cashin, one of the best guests CNBC has on, mid-February is often when a pullback begins. Markets are fairly overbought right now. In the late December through today portion of that rally, it...

No sooner did I comment on how many days the market had been up so far this year and we had a drop of 0.7% in the US and double that in Europe. Gold was down as were bonds and oil. Usually when confidence in the stock market gets too high, the market will fall. The...

US markets were up again slightly today, so what else is new? You can't fill one hand counting the number of down days so far in 2012. No one is complaining of course. I'd like ten more months of what we've had so far in January and February, please. Gold and bonds...

The market was up slightly today while it waited for concrete news on Greek creditors and politicians. Gold was up 1.5% and is up almost 12% since Jan 1. Silver is up 23% in the same time. The YTD gain in the two precious metals are probably the result of inflation...

This year, every time the US market sells off in the AM over news from Europe's debt mess, it gains the loss back by the end of the day or by the next day. Today was another repeat. Greece was supposed to have completed a deal with its private creditors today in order...

The unemployment figures continue to march steadily in the right direction. The number of new hires was much higher than expected and the rate dropped again to 8.3%. US stocks are up better than 1% today and bonds and gold are up again as well. It has been a great...

US stocks were up about 3/4% today, always a nice day. Small stocks did best. Europe also did well. Gold was up, as were bonds. Oil lost 1%. Stocks had been higher but the advance was mainly in the morning and stocks dropped toward the end of the day to give back...

The Case-Schiller Housing Index was released today for November 2011 and showed that home prices nationwide continue to fall. Nationally, they are now down 33% since 2003. In the Charlotte market they dropped 18% on average and are recently up slightly. A long term...