What is Quad Witching? Generally there’s a great deal of confusion concerning the term “quad witching” and what this day may constitute in financial markets. As a result, we would like to take this Quad Witching Friday, March 19, 2010, and demystify the phenomenon once and for all. “Witching” signifies the expiration of an entire group of
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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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The January 11-15, 2009 week will be crucial to the movement of equities and commodities over the next month. This addition of the Weekly Spectrum will recap the December Employment report and explain which economic reports will affect U.S. financial markets in the week ahead. The December Non-Farm Payroll report dropped traders' jaws as if they
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The Institute for Supply Chain Management surprised the world on Monday morning, as they announced the results of their manufacturing managers survey. The report is essentially a survey where every manager is asked to respond to his own experience. Each manager states whether they see conditions improving, deteriorating or remaining constant, with respect to thirteen main criteria. The December survey’s
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Is anyone else sick of the montage of blog posts and articles titled "yada yada yada 2010"?  To institutional investors who have to decorate their books to look "pretty" for investor relations meetings, the end of the year is important, but to actual investors, traders, analysts, etc., (i.e. readers of this blog, Seeking Alpha, WSJ,
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The S&P 500 rally from the March 9, 2009 low has caught many off guard and left more wondering if now is the time to buy stocks. The smart money has already made their profits in the past eight months and reports from the FT now cite hedge funds beginning to take profits. In a
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While the phenomenon hasn't received much attention, the Nikkei 225 headline Japanese stock index has diverted course from all other major economic player stock exchanges. The Nikkei turned negative on August 14, 2009 and hasn't been able to resume the congruent pattern that all other major stock market indexes seem to be following. One can
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The broad measure of the U.S. Equity market, the S&P 500, has found it's way out of a deep hole, dug by the October Employment Situation report that toted headline unemployment at 10.2%. Perhaps giving way to the resilient tone among investors in U.S. firms, this Monday through Wednesday have announced little new economic data, yet
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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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Kicking of the June 15-19 trading week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 both sold off well over 2% and erased previous gains for the month. Should history repeat itself, U.S. equity trading this week will show marginally increased volatility and volume due to the "quadruple witching" day occurring on Friday. The significance
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