After a tumultuous first quarter, one would have expected a somewhat subdued second quarter. As we learned just after a week of trading in April, you can throw that expectation out the window. We must get accustomed to a higher level of realized market volatility. One word of advice – don’t take your investment cues […]
So far, this week; we had Apple’s (AAPL) earnings, Facebook’s (FB) earnings, an FOMC meeting and the healthcare vote in the House of Representatives. AAPL earnings were met with little fanfare. AAPL declined just 0.31% the day after its earnings release. FB declined 0.63% the day after its earnings. Then there was the FOMC basically […]
Equity markets gapped lower at the market open. Most media outlets attributed this as a reaction to the travel bans imposed by President Trump. That sounded pithy (or as Woody Allen wrote “it had great pith”) but it was indeed not the case. The fact is that after a huge run since the Election, the […]
I hope you had a restful and enjoyable holiday weekend. I needed the rest because I caught a nasty bug which had me down for the count for a few days. Of course, those four exciting NFL playoff games helped the recuperation process. I am back to my normal investing / trading condition and look […]
October has been torture for investors, but the real damage is not in the headline Standard & Poor’s 500 (SPX) index but below the surface. For example, SPX has declined 1.62% in October, whereas the widely held biotech ETF, VanEck Vectors (BBH) has declined 7.66%; the SPDRs Consumer Discretionary ETF (XLH) declined 2.27%; the SPDRs Materials […]
Alcoa (AA) officially opened earnings season with what was considered a disappointing report. One must understand that Alcoa is about to spit into two companies, so the earnings report really offered little or no investment value. With a slow boring market, traders needed something to bet on so Alcoa was the cockroach of the day. […]
Monday’s half-holiday with banks and currency markets closed while stock and commodity markets were open resulted in a nice equity market rally. This rally in some part could be attributed to the rise in crude oil prices to multi-month highs or the worst case scenario not playing out for Hurricane Matthew. No matter what, despite […]
Equity markets continue to move higher, in an orderly way. There are no sudden surges in the major indexes, but a smooth steady advance. Even declines have been brief and shallow. Leading the way have been those risk-on stocks that are important elements to bull markets such as industrials, financials and technology shares. The only […]
It has been a rough month for growth stocks and today will be no better. Apple’s (AAPL) results are in and traders hit the sell button immediately. The reason was that earnings per share of $1.90 fell short of $2.00 consensus estimates. Revenues fell short of estimates as well, by about 3%. Slowing iPhone sales […]
The US equity markets, to be specific, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX) has rallied sharply since the February lows. In the process, the index rose to a multi-month high and was within striking distance of its all-time high. Then last week some profit taking kicked in. The biggest victims of that profit taking […]
