The “sell-off” is now two weeks young as red flags are hoisted daily above a mob of jaw dropped spectators, formerly known as the efficient market. There is no absence of questions on the minds of international market forecasters. Instead, we’re hearing vague rhetoric from analysts and financiers that sounds more like confusion than any sort of prediction. The confident ones are still playing the “buy because markets are down” card, but we are taking an alternative, perhaps disagreeable, path.

The May Consumer Confidence report released Tuesday morning created powerful support to consumer discretionary stocks and lifted the share values of U.S. companies across the board, allowing the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) to close higher by nearly 200 points (almost 2.5%). The Consumer Confidence Index increased from 43.0 to 54.9, marking the first time
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Tuesday morning market moves were difficult to swallow for objective traders who witnessed poor indications from the Goldman ISCG store sales and housing starts data. The Goldman report indicated sales during the May 16 ended week were down 1.2% from the prior week and -0.3% off comparable sales last year. Similarly dire were April's annualized
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U.S. equity market initially cheered the 601k initial jobless claims in the final week of April compared to the consensus of 635k and 635k initial jobless claims the prior week. The news accentuates the recent trend of better than expected jobless claims, but unemployment continues to trend higher at relatively aggressive rates when compared to
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