Summing up the pieces that have lead us to the strange "here and now" in global financial markets may produce a different result for each market practitioner, yet there are truths agreed upon by most worth mentioning. The purpose of this article is to identify some truths and un-truths, which will provide a fresh slice
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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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The global recovery rant can be difficult to swallow for traders who take note of deteriorating demand seen around the globe in all countries minus China. Yes China is very large and can cause for an increase in demand for commodities, but the recent appreciation in resource prices from crude to copper to softs in
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Dow components Caterpillar (CAT) and DuPont (DD) are draining the will of investors to remain vested shareholders, as CAT posted its first loss since 1992 and Dupont lowered its 2009 guidance. U.S. stocks weren't the only misfortuned securities Tuesday morning, as crude oil future prices for May and June delivery felt immense downward pressure below
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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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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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The economic strife in U.S. equities over the past nine months was premised by the popping of the crude oil bubble. As the world watched U.S. crude oil futures rocket to a level of $147 / barrel on July 11, 2008, the hype heard at every corner preached we would reach $200 / barrel. Instead
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