Insights

Stocks continued the sharp rally from yesterday's last 45 minutes to rise between 1.2% and 1.8%, depending on the index. Techs and banks led the advance. Gold was up 1.1%, bonds were up and the dollar was down. This continuation today is a pretty good sign. Of course,...

Stocks went from down 2% at 3:15 PM to up 2% and better at the close. Small stocks were up 6%. Gold and bonds turned lower. The only news was a report that European leaders agreed that they need to shore up European banks. Since banks are really the main worry there,...

All major US stock indexes set a new low for the year today, decisively breaking through a level that had acted as support for multiple market drops since July. Panic is probably not far behind. Gold was up 1.9% today, as and high quality bonds did well. Basically,...

Well, here we are back at the bottom of the trading range. Will it be broken? This week should tell us and maybe even today. If it is decisively broken, the market drop could steepen. The old closing low was 1,120 on the S&P 500 index. The index is at 1109 and it has...

Nobody was happy this quarter, only those sitting on the sidelines. Traders, investors, speculators, mutual fund managers, hedge fund managers - everyone hated the quarter. Even bonds had a bad September and gold pulled back sharply the last few weeks. Only the dollar...

Stocks were nicely higher, then down, then up. Volatility is here to stay until Europe is squared away. S&P 500 - 0.8% DJIA 1.3% Sml Stocks 1.7% Europe 1.6% Asia MIXED Gold 1.0% Oil 2.3% Food 2.3% Bonds Up Dollar 0.2% Every one of those above indexes except the dollar...

The selling in stocks accelerated during the last hour and the S&P 500 finished about 2% lower. It has given back half the intraday advance since last Thursday and sits 2% above the closing low from a week ago, the low for the month. It is 4% above the intraday low...

New circuit breakers were announced yesterday that will apply to all US exchanges, including electronic exchanges. This was because the old ones triggering at 10%, 20%, 30% had not triggered in the last 20 years. Here are the new circuit breakers for stock markets. If...

After a brief rally, stocks turned down to continue yesterday PM's decline. For the first time in a long time everything on my index screen is red - stocks in the US, Europe and Asia, gold, the dollar and bonds. All are down less than 1% for the day. That is unusual...

Stocks gave up more than half their big gains late in the day, finishing up about 1%. That appears to roughly coincide with the news that a split is developing within the Eurozone. Some of the buying this week may be from end of the quarter buying after selling the...