The last week has seen 100 day moving averages torn apart, surprises from economic data reports, and one of the most notable sell-offs for stocks in some time. Recently, many home gamers and pros alike, have put financials out of their purview. The erratic and effectively risky nature of these names are less than inviting, but
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Crude Oil The oil issue has been speculative to this point. It's hard to argue against 90 dollar oil when we saw 145 in July 2008, but the fundamentals aren't congruent with the price growth we've seen and this trader finds it easier to argue FOR $60/ barrel oil. Crude supply in the U.S. remains
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Thursday morning the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) announced a change to the mark to market accounting standard, technically known as FASB Recommendation 157. Under new accounting rules banks will be allowed to value the toxic paper tied to mortgages based on cash flow valuations rather than fair market prices. Many mortgage backed assets are
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U.S. equities closed substantially lower across the board on Monday as the overbought rally and fear leading into 2009 Q1 earnings data caused selling pressure among stocks. The Sunday announcement that General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner had submitted his resignation raised eyebrows among analysts and investors as they questioned the reasoning behind his departure. The
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Excluding the bottomless pit of Wall Street executives now tarred and feathered to satisfy the constituents of the "blameless" U.S. congress, the Big Three automaker CEOs rank second as they were publicly chastised for their own inadequacies. While much blame has been rightfully bestowed on Ford, GM and Chrysler for declining from market dominators to
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U.S. equities felt strong selling pressure in pre-market trading Friday due to expected yet unfortunate economic data. Markets were unable to build optimism throughout the day Friday as the overbought tech rally ran out of gas and all indexes ended the day down; DJIA -1.87%, S&P 500 -2.03%, NASDAQ -2.63%. Consumer spending for February came
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Crude began to rally early Thursday as U.S. commodity markets opened on positive news that 2008 Q4 GDP numbers were not as terrible as expected. Futures prices are completely ignoring the stockpiles of crude throughout developed countries, in the Arab world, and floating off-shore in tankers. While WTI crude futures were trading below $45/barrel they were
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Bulls found evidence to further their exposure to U.S. equities on Monday as markets climbed to post the largest daily increase of the new year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) gained nearly 500 points and the S&P 500 soared 7%. The surfacing of a tangible Treasury plan to create the promised "public/private investment program"
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After profiting from a trade, humility can be a lucrative virtue… Regardless of how often one tracks the health of the stock market during these turbulent times, it would be impossible to ignore the fury of the recent rally in U.S. equity markets. Many have called for this rally to be the first leg of
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Growth in U.S. equity markets over the past two weeks has been fueled by new found confidence in the banking sector as XLf, the Financial Select Sector SPDR, as it has driven higher by 52% at the close on Thursday. The decline in bank stocks over the past two days has caused the Dow 30
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